Time for a Change
by Aurora West
Summary: It's hard to get over someone stealing your superpowers. Months after Negaduck did exactly that to the Fearsome Four, a newcomer to St. Canard presents them with the opportunity for a little payback. Of course, things never go exactly as planned, especially not in St. Canard...
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: _Darkwing Duck_ is the property of the Walt Disney Company.

Author's note: This is a re-written version of a fic I wrote way back in 1999/2000, which I decided to overhaul to bring up to my current writing standards. The original had a lot of problems, from a lack of descriptive place-setting to too much dialogue to an original character who probably was a Mary Sue. When I say I overhauled it, I'm not joking.

It's the first of a trilogy and I plan on giving the other two the same treatment, and then expanding it from there into an ongoing series.

* * *

CHAPTER 1

The scent of ozone and electricity permeated the air around the St. Canard Electrical Plant, a scorched quality to the air that could have heralded a thunderstorm. _Could_ have, that was, if there had been a cloud in the night sky, which there wasn't. It was a clear, perfect night, temperature hovering in the mid 60s, humidity blessedly almost nonexistent, and just the slightest summer breeze blowing off the bay.

From the roof of the plant, the view of St. Canard was spectacular. Not many people knew that, but the city spread out like a jeweled, sparkling blanket, lit streets running through it like golden threads. The Audubon Bay Bridge stretched across the dark water of the bay, shadow on shadow, its lit towers standing sentinel over the city, cars crossing beneath them like little beads of light. Closer, just down the hill from the plant, really, St. Canard High was lit up like a…like something really big and shiny and bright, the sounds of some sporting event wafting through the pellucid night air.

Yes, it was lovely. It was home. It was going to be subjugated and bent to the will of its most powerful and genius super-villain within the next hour.

Megavolt took a deep breath of the charged air, his whiskers trembling a little in the breeze as he perched in the power plant's main transmission tower, his knees hooked around a metal beam, and checked his watch. "That late already?" he asked no one in particular, though an aircraft warning light blinking redly above him called down that he needed to keep better track of the time. He cracked his knuckles and stood, taking in the view of St. Canard one last time before he enacted his master plan.

Then, with a grin and a chuckle, he clambered out of the tower, strode purposefully across the roof, and threw open the access door leading back down into the plant, where his machine had completed charging. It pulsed with pent-up energy and Megavolt rubbed his hands gleefully together in anticipation. This time, at long last, he was going to be victorious. This city would be his! No one was going to stop him!

Cackling, he scampered over to the machine and wrapped his hands around the control lever. "St. Canard," he said with relish, "prepare to fry!"

For a second, he paused, more out of habit than anything else, and looked around. Nothing and no one. He was alone.

He grinned and pulled the lever.

And he managed to get it halfway pulled, too, he was _so close_, but then a cloud of purple smoke exploded in front of him and a voice announced, "I am the terror…that flaps in the night!"

"Oh no, not again," Megavolt groaned, waving his hands and coughing as the smoke enveloped him.

"_I_…am the—"

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, you are the _oven_ that scorches my dinner," Megavolt interrupted with a scowl.

The smoke cleared, revealing Darkwing Duck, fedora angled absurdly over his eyes for maximum melodrama, though his typical pretentious expression seemed to have been replaced by one that looked more like irritation. He yanked the hat up out of his face to glare at Megavolt and said, "Stealing my lines now, eh, Megavolt?"

Megavolt sneered. "What, are you going to arrest me for taking your intellectual property?"

"Ha!" Darkwing replied. "I wouldn't give up your day job, Sparky. I write better one-liners in my sleep!"

Putting a hand to his chest in mock sadness, Megavolt replied, "Oh, I'm _so_ hurt." Electricity arced between the prongs on his hat and he raised an arm, the current running down it to his finger. "I think you're right about the day job, though, I'd really hate to give up my plans for destruction and mayhem after all these years."

Darkwing pointed his gas gun but Megavolt grinned and shot a bolt of electricity from his finger before the duck could pull the trigger. It missed as Darkwing rolled out of the way, and then Megavolt had to jump aside as Darkwing fired his gun. He inhaled a tiny bit of the noxious looking yellow gas that burst out of the canister before he could get far enough away, and his eyes stung a little with tears, which enraged him. "Tear gas, Dorkwing?!" he yelled. "That's cheating!"

From somewhere in the darkness, the hero's voice drifted down, saying, "Pretty rich coming from you, you malignant maligner of morality!"

Stalking around transformers and generators, trying to follow the sound of Darkwing's voice, Megavolt replied, "Yeah, well, I wouldn't talk. What was Tom Lockjaw's special report the other night? 'Darkwing Duck: Hero or Hood?' Or was that the one where he referred to you as 'Winged Cape-y Guy'?"

Darkwing's affronted huff was audible and Megavolt crept towards it. "The media in this town are a bunch of hacks! What kind of reporting _was_ that, I mean, did any of them bother to talk to _me_?"

"They never interview me either," Megavolt offered sympathetically.

"Whatever happened to journalistic integrity?"

"Hey, bad news and scandal sells, am I right?"

This seemed to pull Darkwing out of his stewing, and he said, "I'm surprised you have time to watch that scurrilous slander during your sinister scheming! I expect more of you, Megs, you're normally so single-minded."

Megavolt narrowed his eyes as he finally caught sight of a cape fluttering around a corner. "I took a break," he said, baring his teeth in a grin.

There was a click behind him. Megavolt froze and slowly turned around, finding the muzzle of Darkwing's gas gun pointed right at his nose, with Darkwing, currently cape-less, right behind it. "Better be careful with those breaks," the duck said. "Take too many and you'll never get anything done."

Clasping his hands behind his back and letting them crackle with power, Megavolt said, "Luckily, I'm very disciplined." With a triumphant cackle, he whipped his hands around, prepared to fry Dorkwing—but just as he let electricity fly from his fingers, Darkwing ducked.

And it was at that moment that Megavolt realized where he was standing and what that powerful stream of electricity was going to hit. "Uh oh," he said in a small voice as the bolt slammed into his invention.

He threw himself to the ground and found himself next to Darkwing, who gave him a look of disgust and said, "What kind of aim was that?"

"I was aiming for you!" Megavolt snapped as the machine began to shake and whine, spitting huge green sparks from its innards. One of them landed on Darkwing's hat, which he ripped off his head and beat on the ground before it could burst into flame. "Wait," Megavolt said slowly, flicking a spark away from his shoulder, "are you telling me that you didn't do that on purpose?"

By this point, the machine's whine had risen to such a high pitch that it was hard to even hear Darkwing as he said, "A…um…hero's intuition is his most…er…valuable weapon?"

Megavolt raised his eyes to the shuddering machine, which was shorting out the power plant's generators in white-hot electrical explosions one-by-one. "You might want to get your most valuable weapon looked at, then," he said, just as the whine rose to an unbearable pitch. He jumped to his feet, braving the sparks showering the floor, and bolted for the door, which really, he knew, he had no hope of getting to before his baby blew sky-high.

Darkwing followed him, all animosity between them forgotten as they ran for their lives. But Megavolt knew his inventions. He slaved over them for days or weeks and loved them like they were his children. He knew their moods, their nuances, their quirks.

And that was why he wasn't surprised when the machine exploded with a huge discharge of electricity, raining pieces of metal down and sending such a powerful current through the floor that when it hit Megavolt his rubber boots did nothing, and the resultant shock blew him right off his feet and somersaulted him through the air.

His backside hit the floor with a painful thump and he swayed woozily, staring out the open door—hey, he'd almost made it after all!—as the entirety of St. Canard winked into blackness.

A scraping at his side drew his attention, and his eyes fell on a heap of charred purple clothing. Through the haze of power still buzzing through his veins, it occurred to him that the heap of clothes looked a lot like Darkwing's dippy costume, and— "Oh!" he said, his eyes lighting up. He stuck a finger out and poked the heap. "Have I finally done it?" he asked gleefully. "Have I finally killed Darkwing Duck?!"

There was a cough from the heap, and then a pained and clipped, "I am still considering that as a distinct possibility."

Megavolt's face fell. "Well," he sighed, "it was a nice thought." He tried to get his feet underneath himself to stand up and thought better of it when pain shot through his whole body. "Say, Darkwing," he began conversationally, "what do you say we put this whole epic confrontation on hold for tonight?"

"Not a chance, Mega—ouch—volt," Darkwing replied, shifting slightly, but still mostly resembling nothing more than a pile of burnt clothing.

"Ooookay, fine," Megavolt replied crossly. "Ten minute hiatus, then?"

There was a pause. And then, "I can live with that."

The two of them sat there in the darkness for awhile. Sirens began wailing, dopplering by somewhere down the hill, and Megavolt checked his watch again, figuring it was only a matter of time until some of those sirens and the police cars they belonged to showed up outside the power plant. He tapped at the watch when he noticed it wasn't ticking, then gave a long-suffering sigh. "I go through these things like they're fuses," he said to Darkwing.

The duck had pulled himself into a sitting position by this time. "You should buy in bulk."

"Hey! That's not a bad idea! Not the buying. I mean, obviously I'd steal them, but the bulk…not bad, Darkwing, not bad."

Darkwing rolled his eyes and muttered something about staking out all the watch stores in the city, then creakily climbed to his feet. "All right, Megavolt, ten minutes are up. I'm pulling the plug on your pernicious plot post-haste."

There was a certain enthusiasm lacking in the words, and after a second, Megavolt pointed out, "My plot's already had the plug pulled on it."

"Oh." Darkwing looked around at the dark power plant, then began searching through his pockets. "You're right. I guess all that's left is the part where I gift-wrap you for the police."

Megavolt pushed himself off the ground. His head was still buzzing a little and his hands were shaking from the massive shock. "I'd like to see you try it, duck," he said, pointing emphatically. His finger sparked without him meaning it to and he smiled, trying to bring something a little more shocking to bear.

His body didn't comply, however. "Ugh, system overload," he groaned, then ducked away as Darkwing lunged for him. Something cracked in his spine and he adjusted his trajectory to be slightly less ambitious, though he still hit the ground with a hard thud that rattled his teeth.

He rolled to one side and smacked his head with a clang against the side of one of the blown out transformers. "Oof," he said as he saw double, "I forgot about how much my spatial awareness goes when I get shocked like that."

Something yanked him up by the collar and Megavolt squinted, wondering how long Darkwing had been working with a twin. "It's going to be a dry cell for you, Sparky, for a long, _long_ time—yowch!"

Darkwing dropped Megavolt unceremoniously to the ground, and Megavolt quickly lifted himself up by his hands to see what was going on now. Darkwing's sleeve was aflame and he was frantically blowing at it, which puzzled Megavolt. With the power dead there was nothing to set that duck on fire…

Then he raised his eyes a little further and gulped. There was a person-sized ball of fire burning in the middle of the power plant. His mouth dropped open when it took a step forward and he realized that not only was it person-sized, it apparently _was_ a person. A person made of…fire?

Having finally succeeded in putting out his sleeve, Darkwing whirled towards the fireball and pronounced, "Another felonious fiend for Darkwing Duck to finish off! You won't soon forget the day that you fought the fabulous feathered—hey!" He broke off as the fire person shot a ball of flame at him.

"Yeah, get 'im!" Megavolt cheered.

Darkwing glared at Megavolt then turned his attention back to the fireball, who was advancing on the duck. "Okay, bub," he said, pulling his gas gun out and taking aim. "Suck gas." The gun made an odd clunking sound but didn't fire, and Darkwing looked at it puzzledly. "Huh?" he said, just as the weapon exploded in a cloud of gas.

The stranger took the opportunity to shoot a stream of fire into the gas, which resulted in another pained cry from Darkwing. He stumbled out of the cloud, coughing and rubbing what appeared to be singed tail feathers, and choked, "I think it may be time to beat a strategic retreat."

With that, he disappeared out the door, leaving Megavolt alone with the fireball. Getting to his feet, he cocked his head and said, "Hey, thanks. I had that under control, obviously, but I don't mind saying you definitely brought the tactical advantage back over to my side." The fireball didn't respond, but it did turn towards him.

He cleared his throat and rubbed at a charred patch on his left glove. "So, uh…neat trick." Taking a step towards the fireball, he asked, "You must be new in town, pal." Still no response, so he stuck his hand out, then glanced at the way the flames were licking the floor and, on second thought, withdrew it. "Got a name?"

The fireball responded to that, though not the way Megavolt had expected. Without warning, the flame snuffed out and Megavolt, his eyes accustomed to the light from the fire person, was left in blackness, afterimages of the ball of flame burned onto his retinas.

"Hey!" he yelled. "That wasn't very sociable!"

There was no answer, except a clanging overhead that might have been someone climbing onto the second storey of the plant to access the windows. He was about to follow the noise when the sound of sirens reached his ears—and when he glanced over his shoulder towards the door, he saw blue and red flashing lights. Looked like Darkwing wasn't the only one beating a strategic retreat, Megavolt thought to himself as he clambered back up to the roof, dropped down on the power lines leading away from the St. Canard Electrical Plant, and skated away on them.


	2. Chapter 2

CHAPTER 2

Megavolt was late. He hated being late. Well, it depended on his mood, really—sometimes, weekends mostly, punctuality wasn't such a big deal; maybe you lingered over your coffee before putting on the battery pack and heading out to commit some crime, but today was…uh…

He took both hands off the steering wheel and tapped at his chin thoughtfully with a finger, then had to make a quick grab for it again as the car drifted towards the tensioned cable dividing the road. _Thursday!_ It was Thursday, right, and he was…what was he doing? Peering out the window at the passing scenery, which was distinctly run-down and derelict-looking, he wracked his brain, trying to remember the reason he was driving around the worst part of the warehouse district on a Thursday morning, when he wasn't even completely recovered from Tuesday's failed scheme.

It didn't come to him for a minute or two, and he was considering turning around and heading home, when suddenly it hit him—Negaduck had called a meeting of the Fearsome Five. And then he remembered why he was feeling so stressed out to begin with—he was currently late.

He smoothed out the paper on his leg where he'd written the address of Negaduck's current hideout. Personally he'd been shocked and not a little irritated that he'd gotten this summons at all. The last time he'd seen Negaduck had been that unfortunate incident where he'd stolen Megavolt's powers using the Mystic Eye of Quackzacoatl. Not just Megavolt's, either—the rest of the Fearsome Five's, too, and after that, Megavolt, Quackerjack, Bushroot, and Liquidator had resolved never to work with that double-crossing duck again.

Megavolt had no idea if he'd see the rest of the gang at Negaduck's hideout. But he had a feeling if they'd received threats even remotely close to the violent and gory ones he'd gotten, they would be.

He fumbled for his cup of Starducks coffee and took a swig of it, trying to read addresses around the rim as he drove. Thirty-four-oh-six, thirty-four-oh-eight—he slammed on the brakes and jammed the coffee back into the cup holder, hitting the curb as he swerved into the parking lot of what appeared to be a long-abandoned warehouse, but one which bore the same address that was written on the crinkled paper on his leg.

As he yanked on the handbrake, he looked around. There were a few unhealthy looking trees struggling to hang onto life along the thin, grassy shoulder between the parking lot and the road. The weeds growing up through the cracks in the asphalt, on the other hand, seemed to be doing much better. Megavolt wondered briefly if he should park in the back, then shrugged and figured his car was fine where it was. Besides, there was a pogo stick leaning up against the side of the building near the door.

He got out of the car, locked it for good measure—this was a pretty valuable vehicle, not to mention the sentimental attachment that he had to it—and approached the closed warehouse door. When he reached for the doorknob and put a hand on it, he paused, steeling himself for whatever he was going to find inside.

Three heads turned towards him when he swung the door open and looked in. The fourth didn't need to turn because it was already staring straight towards him, a murderous expression on its face. Megavolt felt his knees weaken. Why, oh why had he stopped at that Starducks on the way here?

"So glad you could _join _us, Megavolt," Negaduck said in a voice that was that patented blend of sarcasm and barely-suppressed rage that he'd perfected.

"Um," Megavolt said. His eyes flicked towards where Quackerjack, Bushroot, and Liquidator were seated in folding chairs. All three of them were giving him wide-eyed stares. "No problem?"

Negaduck's eyes narrowed. "I hope we didn't get you out of bed," he said, his tone dripping with false sincerity. Then, with a snap, he whipped the previous day's St. Canard Gazette out of his jacket and jabbed the front page with his finger, saying, "In fact, I do _so _hope you're fully recovered from your little misadventure the other night."

"Well, now that you mention it, I do kind of have this headache behind my eyes—"

"GET IN HERE AND SIT DOWN!" Negaduck roared.

Megavolt sandwiched himself in the empty chair between Bushroot and Quackerjack without further ado, feeling just the mildest twinge of self-loathing that he didn't stand up to Negaduck. Of course, there was a chainsaw propped rather conspicuously against the wall, so that might have had something to do with it.

"Now that we're all here," Negaduck began in what passed for a pleasant tone, "we can have a little chat. It's been awhile, boys, hasn't it?" When he paused and glared at them, they all nodded dutifully, murmuring their agreement with this statement. "Now, I know there might have been some hard feelings after that emerald business, but I hope you didn't think I was _dissolving _the Fearsome Five."

The four of them looked at each other. Megavolt had not, however patchy his memory was, forgotten the pact they'd made. They'd been _done _with Negaduck. Finito. They'd never work with or for him again; he didn't deserve their loyalty and he especially didn't deserve the benefit of their super-powers. Not after they'd gotten arrested for one of his schemes and held out hope that he was going to break them out of jail, only to have him steal their powers. Nope, if Negaduck ever showed his face around any of them again, they'd let him know _exactly _what they thought of him.

But they all shook their heads, prompting a smile from Negaduck. It wasn't a nice smile, but then again, it never was. "I'm so glad to hear that." He stopped to beam at them, and Megavolt felt his comrades shrink back into their chairs at the terrifying quality of the smile. "There's just one _teensy _thing that's come to my attention," Negaduck went on. He paused and looked at each of them in turn, and Megavolt braced himself for more shouting. But all Negaduck did was say dangerously, "The four of you have continued to commit crimes together, and the media has taken to referring to you as the 'Fearsome Four'." He pulled a rifle out of his jacket and leaned on it. "I don't like that, kids. I don't like that one bit."

He fixed Quackerjack with a mean stare, who squeaked and looked at Megavolt, who quailed and turned towards Bushroot. Bushroot proceeded to visibly wilt and swivel to stare beseechingly at Liquidator, who glared at the three of them but nevertheless offered, "We never marketed ourselves as the Fearsome Four, boss! That's _your _slogan and we know better than to infringe on your copyright!"

"But—" Quackerjack said, only to yelp in pain and shut his beak when Megavolt stuck a finger into his side and gave him a hard shock of electricity. Not enough to cause serious damage. Just enough to hurt. A lot.

Because this wasn't _exactly _true, as well as Liquidator might have been able to sell it. Sure, they hadn't _told _the media to call them the Fearsome Four. But they _had _been referring to themselves by the name for months.

Unfortunately, Negaduck had noticed the interruption. "But?" he prompted Quackerjack.

The jester gave him a wide, vaguely manic grin. "But nothing, boss. Just sitting here listening to your…uh…really…um—"

"Shut up, Quackerjack," Negaduck snapped. Quackerjack complied, seeming happy to do so.

Negaduck shouldered the gun and paced around the backs of their chairs. Only Liquidator followed his progress; the rest of them just exchanged glances with each other, and Quackerjack was rubbing the spot on his side where Megavolt had shocked him, giving the rat a disgruntled look, which Megavolt ignored.

"Things have been quiet here in St. Canard," Negaduck said, still behind them. "A little _too _quiet, as far as I'm concerned. Oh, sure, there's been some theft. Maybe a few car-jackings. A _little _bit of wanton destruction. But nothing really _big_. Nothing to make the citizens of this sorry city sit up and take notice of the fact that this town belongs to _us_, not the police, not the mayor, and _definitely _not that do-gooder Darkwing Duck." He leaned an elbow on the back of Megavolt's chair and Megavolt stiffened. "I bet you wish you'd managed to take Darkwing Duck out after your latest screw-up at the power plant, right, Megavolt?"

Drawing in a deep breath, Megavolt said, "You know, interesting thing, boss, when I was there, after Darkwing had—well, when things weren't going completely according to my plan, this…uh, person made of fire showed up."

"And I should care about this why?" Negaduck asked.

At this, Megavolt swiveled around to face him, though he regretted it when he saw how close he was to Negaduck's nasty glare. "Because I think he must be some new villain in town. He definitely didn't seem to like Dorkwing."

"Sparky," Negaduck said, a tissue-thin veneer of nicety in his voice, "you're telling me that a super-villain showed up in St. Canard who already has it in for that despicably dressed doppelgänger of mine, and _I _don't know about it?"

"Um." His comments seemed to have been misconstrued, and he was still trying to figure out how when Negaduck straightened up, glaring darkly.

Jabbing a finger into Megavolt's nose, Negaduck snarled, "You've had one too many shocks to that deluded collection of cells that _supposedly _makes up your brain."

Mercifully, Negaduck's interest in belaboring the point seemed negligible. Returning to his position in front of all of them and planting the rifle on the ground again, he said, "You may or may not have heard, but the St. Canard Fine Arts Museum recently pulled off a _major _coup. A traveling exhibit containing a priceless and irreplaceable set of items from the Crown Jewels will be stopping here rather than in Duckburg. Imagine, the museum board in Duckburg claimed the collection wouldn't be _safe _in St. Canard. They said this city's too _crime-ridden _for such valuable items to spend any time here." He grinned. "They were right. Luckily, the museum board at the Met wanted to bring some _culture_ to St. Canard."

"Another museum, boss?" Quackerjack said dubiously. "But last time—"

"Last time _what_, Chuckles?" Negaduck demanded, yanking Quackerjack forward by the tassels of his hat. "I thought we'd put all of that _behind _us?" Still holding Quackerjack by the hat, he looked around at the others, daring them to disagree.

Bushroot looked miserable but replied, "We all got our powers back in the end, so no bark off my back."

"Super-villains everywhere agree, that's water under the bridge," Liquidator said.

Megavolt didn't quite meet Negaduck's eyes as he said sullenly, "Hey, I barely even remember that emerald thing anyway."

Letting go of Quackerjack's hat, which caused the jester to fall back and knock his chair over, Negaduck said, "That's what I wanted to hear. Now listen up, because here's what we're going to do…"

* * *

Disabling all the security alarms for the St. Canard Fine Arts Museum was easy. A couple zaps here, a couple zaps there, one or two cable lines cut, and presto, no pesky alarms to alert every emergency responder in the city that a robbery was taking place. Except Megavolt was hanging next to the bundle of cables running out from the back of the building, scratching his head with one hand while he clung to a ledge with the other, trying to remember if he'd already cut the right ones.

"_Megavolt_," a voice said in a stage whisper from below him. He craned his neck to glance down and was rewarded with a small rubber ball in the goggles, which exploded seconds later, showering him with a hail of broken rubber. "What's taking so long up there?" Quackerjack demanded. "The boss said to meet him in fifteen minutes and it's been _eighteen_!"

Glaring down at him, Megavolt snapped, "Do you want to come up here and figure this out?"

"Don't be ridiculous, you know I'm awful at technology stuff!"

"Technology stuff," Megavolt snorted derisively, turning back to the cables. But now, with Quackerjack having distracted him, he was even more unsure of what he'd already done. Bracing himself against the side of the building with his boots, he reached for his wire cutters and snipped what he thought was the last one that needed to be cut. For a second, he held his breath, waiting for an alarm to start wailing, but when all remained quiet, he breathed a sigh of relief and swung himself over to a gutter, sliding down it to the alley below.

Candy wrappers littered the ground and Megavolt said, "You were supposed to be keeping watch, not stuffing your face!"

"I got bored," Quackerjack shrugged. "No one saw you, anyway. Now come on," he added, grabbing Megavolt's arm, "before Negaduck yells at us any more!"

It seemed obvious to point out that Negaduck always yelled no matter what the situation, and Megavolt let Quackerjack drag him for a few feet before yanking his arm back. The two of them made their way to the predetermined meeting spot, beneath one of the museum office windows, finding Negaduck, Bushroot, and Liquidator already waiting there.

"You're late," Negaduck observed. "Did you turn the alarms off?"

"Motion sensors, lasers, and cameras all disarmed," Megavolt replied.

Negaduck nodded. "Bushroot?"

The plant-duck reached his arms over his head, both of them lengthening, and wedged his leafy hands under the window. After straining for a second, he scraped the window open. Without another word, Negaduck hopped up on Bushroot's head and climbed up his vine-y arm, then slid through the window.

"Feeling used and abused?" Liquidator asked softly. "Then let the rest of your super-villain gang find their own ways up!"

"No problem," Quackerjack said with a delighted laugh, using the springs in his shoes to bounce up to the window sill, which he latched onto before disappearing through the opening. Liquidator's watery form propelled him upwards and while Bushroot scrambled up the side of the building, Megavolt electro-magnetized the lid of a garbage can and used it to lift him to the window. Disgusting, but effective.

They were standing in an office stuffed to the gills with books and papers. Quackerjack opened a huge tome, flipped through it for a second, and then said disparagingly, "Well, at least there are _pictures_."

"C'mon," Negaduck said, opening the office door and motioning to them. The office led out into a gallery filled with paintings, probably worth plenty, but Negaduck ignored them as he strode through the room. Special Collections, where the Crown Jewels were located, took up a corner of the floor they were on, and halfway there, Negaduck stopped and said, "Quackerjack, Liquidator, you're with me. Megavolt and Bushroot, I want you to watch for Darkwing Doofus. Keep an eye out for him in the Ancient Mediterranean room, that's where the rest of the galleries branch off from."

They all nodded and split up. Megavolt and Bushroot hurried through the dark galleries, both of them squinting to read the signs indicating what period the rooms corresponded to.

"This place is creepy at night," Bushroot said in a hushed tone.

Megavolt was about to scoff at that, but he stopped dead in his tracks when he came face to face with a statue looming out of the gloom. "Yeah, a little bit," he agreed, edging around it.

"I used to come here sometimes," Bushroot said after another minute. "Before I was a villain, I mean. It was a nice break from my research."

A vague memory surfaced in Megavolt's mind of standing in the museum's marbled galleries—though in the memory they seemed much bigger—standing with two people and looking up at a picture on the wall, a painting, maybe, and had he made it? He shook the memory away, if that was even what it was. It made his head feel like it was stuffed full of cotton.

"Uh huh," he said, not really listening to Bushroot. Suddenly, he skidded to a halt as he spotted the plaque on the wall reading 'Heinrich Schliebirdd Ancient Mediterranean Gallery'. Just outside it, the museum's main stairway led down to the lobby, and the door at the other end of the gallery led into another wing. Megavolt peered out into the lobby, ducking as a flashlight beam swept across the door to the Ancient Mediterranean gallery. "Security guard," he whispered to Bushroot.

Bushroot nodded, and the two of them waited in silence for a minute, until the security guard's footsteps reached the top step. Then Bushroot reached out with a growing arm and conked the guard on the back of the head. The guard dropped like a stone, and Bushroot quickly dragged him into the shadows of the gallery.

Then they waited. Bushroot kept whipping his head around, but Megavolt just leaned against the wall and folded his arms across his chest. He almost hoped Darkwing Dork _did _show up. He had a score to settle with that duck, after all.

Several minutes passed in silence and Megavolt was just beginning to think about heading down to Special Collections, when there was a faint noise from an area off to his left.

He turned towards it, noticing out of the corner of his eye that Bushroot was watching him. For a minute, he held himself still, wondering if he'd imagined it. No—there it was again, just a tiny sound, like a shoe scuffing on the floor. Narrowing his eyes, he started towards it.

"Megavolt!" Bushroot hissed as the rat crept towards the sound. "Where are you going? Negaduck said we're supposed to—"

"I heard something!" Megavolt shot back. He crept closer to a collection of cases housing a bunch of ancient looking pots, trying to stay below the level of the pedestals that they were sitting on top of to remain out of sight. When he reached them, he threw himself at their bases, his back against them. Bushroot was staring at him, looking vaguely panicked at this unscheduled detour from the night's plan, and Megavolt glared, hoping his message of 'keep-quiet-if-you-know-what's-good-for-you' was clear enough.

"_Hurry up_," Bushroot mouthed to him.

Megavolt just waved a hand at him, then slowly lifted himself from the floor to peer through the glass case.

A pair of blue eyes blinked at him through the glass, then widened and disappeared.

Megavolt jumped to his feet in time to see a shadowy form disappearing around the corner into the next gallery. "Was that Darkwing Duck?" Bushroot asked frantically.

"It's _someone _who's not supposed to be here!" Megavolt said, charging up a bolt of electricity in his hand, which he fired into the dark gallery. The flash as it hit the ground briefly illuminated the figure again, but all Megavolt saw was black and maybe a flash of pale arms.

"We can cut him off in Rococo!" Bushroot yelled.

"Fine!" Megavolt shouted back, having already taken off after the shadowy figure. It obviously wasn't Darkwing, he thought as he flung himself around a corner, his boots squeaking on the floor. Darkwing was too pretentious to hide behind a bunch of museum displays and then run when discovered. Who was it, then? _Another _stupid hero?

Echoing footfalls from the other direction became audible and Megavolt burst into the Rococo gallery just as Negaduck, Quackerjack, Liquidator, and Bushroot appeared in the opposite doorway. The figure he'd been chasing slid to a halt and wasted no time in bursting into flame, chucking a fireball towards the four villains gathered in the other door.

Electricity sparked on Megavolt's hat and he shot it at the figure, who skipped back to avoid being hit.

"Liquidator, wash this guy out," Negaduck growled. "He's disrupting my caper!"

The firelight from the mysterious interloper flickered on the watery villain's grin as he said, "Need a damper put on inconvenient fires? The Liquidator's patented fire suppression system can save all your criminal endeavors!"

The fireball, though, seemed ready for just such an attack, throwing himself into a dive and shooting a jet of flame at Liquidator, half of whom evaporated. The assault threw off Liquidator's aim and he sloshed, uncontrolled, against the wall.

Negaduck looked enraged. "Get him, you knobs!" he yelled.

But Megavolt, Bushroot, and Quackerjack didn't move. "Er, _how_?" Quackerjack asked, his eyebrows drawn together in concern.

By this time, the fireball had backed up against the wall. Negaduck grit his teeth and pulled out a gun. "What a bunch of amateurs," he growled. "Eat lead, pyro!"

He fired and the figure ducked. The slug left a hole in the wall where the figure's head had been—assuming there _was _a head underneath there.

Liquidator reformed into his canine shape and started forward to make another pass at the fireball, but at that moment, fire started blasting off the figure indiscriminately. Megavolt had to duck before a jet of flame hit him in the face, and it slammed into a painting behind him instead, sending the canvas up in flames. It wasn't the only one, either—half the paintings in the room were crackling and spitting sparks, and Megavolt saw Negaduck rip his flaming hat off his head and throw it to the ground.

The air began growing thick with smoke and suddenly, startling all of them, an ear-splitting alarm went off.

Megavolt snapped his fingers. "Fire alarm. I _knew _I was forgetting something." Then something occurred to him and he looked up. "_Oh_," he said, his stomach sinking as the sprinkler system hissed to life.

The water hit him and he convulsed, limbs jerking spasmodically as he shorted out, having the vague sense of taking out Liquidator as collateral damage. As he laid in a puddle of water, with more pattering on his face from the sprinklers, he could hear…stuff going on around him, but as always, he was too half-conscious and drained to be able to concentrate on any of it.

There was a shattering sound and Megavolt turned his head woozily towards it, just in time to see a streak of flame disappear out the window. With the fireball gone, the blaring alarm seemed downright peaceful, and now that he'd already short-circuited, the water raining on him had kind of a calming quality.

"Geez, talk about overreacting," he said with a cough, getting to his feet shakily and brushing soot and water off his jumpsuit. It didn't do much but leave black charcoal streaks.

In the distance, he could hear sirens, but he was more concerned with Negaduck than with the police. Specifically, the way his fists were clenched so tightly they were bloodless, the red tinge to his eyes, and the murderous expression on his face.

"New project," Negaduck said through gritted teeth, staring at the smoldering ruins of his fedora. "Find that guy and bring him to me." His eyes darkened and narrowed to slits. "Then I'll decide whether or not I'm going to kill him."

* * *

"Quacky, we're supposed to be finding that fire-loving freak, not _robbing a toy store_!"

"We're not robbing it," Quackerjack said, staring through a small telescope towards the door of Seventh Street Toys, Games, and Novelties. "We're just sending a message to anyone who's thinking about buying any of that Whiffle Boy _garbage_."

Megavolt scowled and pulled the hat that Quackerjack had insisted he wear further down over his eyes. Passersby were giving them odd stares. He adjusted his trench coat. It caught on his battery and just twisted uncomfortably. Why did Quackerjack always make him wear these stupid disguises? What, exactly, was wrong with letting everyone know exactly who you were and what you were about to do to their precious…well, wherever you were about to wreak havoc?

He snatched the telescope away from Quackerjack and peered through it, but all that met his eye was a shifting pattern of fractalled colors. "This is a kaleidoscope!" he snapped, whacking it across Quackerjack's thick skull.

"Ow!" Quackerjack complained, rubbing his head. "What's the big idea?"

"This is a waste of time," Megavolt growled.

Turning to Megavolt with a pout on his face, Quackerjack said, "_C'mon_, Megsy, there's nothing wrong with having a little fun! We'll go look for the fire-dweeb later." When Megavolt continued to scowl at the duck—the 'Megsy' didn't help; he _really _didn't like being called 'Megsy'—Quackerjack added in a wheedling tone, "Pleeeease, Megs? Pretty please with sprinkles and whipped cream and a cherry on top?" Megavolt remained unmoved. "All work and no play makes Quacky a dull boy, you know," Quackerjack added loftily.

"I don't think there's any danger of that," Megavolt muttered under his breath.

"What?"

In a louder voice, Megavolt replied, "I _said_, I can't believe you're wearing that stupid hat."

Quackerjack just stuck his tongue out and the two of them went back to waiting. Megavolt checked his watch, forgetting that it wasn't working. And yet he didn't forget to put it _on _every day. Typical. He sighed. Then he checked his watch again before ripping it off in frustration and jamming it into his pocket to repair later. Had Quackerjack ever stood still this long in his entire _life_?

To say that Negaduck had been ready to kill somebody after the fiasco at the museum the previous night would have been an understatement. Negaduck had been ready to kill _everybody _after the fiasco at the museum the previous night, and the Fearsome Four—oh right, they weren't supposed to be using that name—had spent the first twenty minutes after arriving back at his hideout cowering underneath or behind whatever shielded them from the bullets that were flying around the warehouse. Then he'd started chain-sawing the furniture apart.

Things might have gotten ugly at that point if Bushroot hadn't accidentally bumped the television. The screen blipped on and Tom Lockjaw's voice was saying, "_…the raging fire destroyed a number of priceless paintings in the Rococo Gallery, leaving this reporter to ask, where was Darkwing Duck to stop this atrocity?_"

The chainsaw abruptly shut off and Negaduck stood in the center of the warehouse, chest heaving, staring at the television, and Liquidator surreptitiously reached over and turned the volume up.

The screen changed from a view of Tom Lockjaw in front of the St. Canard Museum of Fine Arts to one of a convenience store with a shattered front window. "_Citizens of St. Canard, this very investigative reporter can tell you exclusively that the self-styled hero was here, at this convenience store, where he failed to stop this break-in, instead of protecting our artistic treasures!_"

Lockjaw kept talking, but Megavolt's attention shifted to the background of the scene, where Darkwing Duck was actually stalking around the shattered window, that big, dumb sidekick with him, exclaiming, "_Who breaks into a place and doesn't do anything except clean out the sports drinks?_"

"_Uh,_" the sidekick said, "_someone who's really thirsty?_"

Negaduck stalked up and switched the tv off. "So," he said, "that vacuous vigilante's getting the blame for this debacle. That's better than nothing."

The idea of Darkwing being under fire seemed to calm Negaduck down, which was when he'd tasked them with finding the fireball that had ruined their museum heist within the next thirty-six hours. Or else he'd kill them instead, he informed them off-handedly.

Megavolt wondered how Liquidator and Bushroot were doing. Personally, he didn't know how any of them were going to track down the fireball. He'd shown up at two crime scenes that Megavolt had been at but he didn't know why, and when he'd mused about it out loud on the way downtown with Quackerjack, the duck had said, "Maybe it's just your magnetic personality." When Megavolt had laughed sarcastically, Quackerjack went on, "I mean, he's probably just _attracted _to any crime you're committing." That didn't get as much of a reaction, but he still added, "Who wouldn't get a _charge _out of watching you—"

"Okay," Megavolt interrupted flatly. "I get it. Very clever."

He'd either never been told, or had forgotten, that Quackerjack had other plans besides rushing off to find the fireball. It seemed like he got dragged into Quackerjack's schemes an awful lot, with not much reciprocation on the jester's part. Still, trashing the toy store probably wouldn't take long, which still left them about fifteen hours to track down the fire person.

Quackerjack grinned wickedly. "So whaddaya think the boss is going to do to Charcoal Breath once he gets ahold of him?"

Returning the smile, Megavolt replied, "I think the question is how long will the boss make him regret ever coming to St. Canard before he puts the guy out of his misery."

"There'll probably be a lot of blood," the duck sighed happily.

Megavolt grimaced. "Probably."

The street was quieting down by this time—though of _course_, he didn't know what time it _was_, thanks to his worthless watch—and the last employees had left the toy store some time ago, locking the door behind them. Quackerjack rubbed his hands together and then produced Mr. Banana Brain, who pronounced, "Time to go, Joe!"

"Ooh, you think so, Mr. Banana Brain?" Quackerjack asked. He whipped off his disguise, revealing his harlequin costume underneath, and yelled, "It's PLAYTIME!"

Megavolt happily shed his disguise as well and followed Quackerjack as the duck bounded across the street to the toy store. Outside the window, he set up a line of cannon, deploying toy soldiers to man them. "Fire!" he ordered, and the soldiers obeyed. Cannon balls hit the window, breaking it, and exploded once they hit the ground inside the store.

An alarm went off but Megavolt zapped it into silence the minute he climbed through the shattered store front. "Well?" he asked Quackerjack. "Why are we here?"

"_That_," Quackerjack said darkly, pointing with a rigid finger towards a display at the back of the store.

Megavolt actually gasped. There was no mystery why it incensed Quackerjack—it was all Whiffle Boy action figures and toy blasters and trading cards and comics, but what horrified Megavolt were the flashing LEDs running all along the cardboard floor stand. "My poor babies!" he exclaimed, running to the display and falling to his knees in front of it. Stroking them, he asked tenderly, "What have they done to you? Confining you to this…this…this naked display of crass commercialism! Megavolt will save you, little ones."

Just as he was beginning to cut the LEDs loose, the display collapsed in a heap as Quackerjack leapt on it. "Take _that_, Whiffle Jerk!" he snarled.

Megavolt shrieked and shoved Quackerjack away before the idiot could do any more damage, and when he'd freed the LED strips, he cradled them against his chest. Quackerjack was busy ransacking another part of the store, so Megavolt figured he might as well liberate some cash from the register, and while he was doing that, Quackerjack bounced by on his way to the stock room, holding a gigantic water gun that he'd procured from one of the shelves.

After hitting a couple keys on the register and failing to produce any results, Megavolt shrugged, put his hands on either side of it, and sent an explosive jolt of electricity through it. The cash drawer popped open and he emptied it.

Then his head snapped up. He'd heard something. Well, of course he could hear Quackerjack laughing maniacally and destroying stock in the back room, but this was something else. Quickly, he vaulted over the counter and ran to the broken front window to prevent anyone from leaving that way, peering back into the dark store. Just for a little extra insurance that no one was going to sneak by him, he held his arms out and let electricity crackle down them to his hands. "I know you're here, Fire Guy," he said. Actually he _didn't _know anything of the sort, and even if someone was there, he saw no reason that it was going to be their quarry, but hey, you couldn't sue a guy for optimism.

Glass crunched just to his right, and he looked over to see a dark figure trying to sneak past him to the door. "Aha!" he cried, diving for it. He missed, but the figure fled towards the back of the store, between two shelves. Megavolt scrambled to his feet and followed it into the dark video game aisle, using a current arcing back and forth on his hat to see.

There was a shadowy form barely visible at the end of the aisle, and as Megavolt noticed its situation, he cackled. "Bad luck, Fireball," he said. At least he hoped it was the fireball. The shelves ran all the way back to the wall, leaving the figure trapped there. "But you know, I always said that those power gloves were a dead-end." He chuckled again and raised a sparking hand to zap the figure, but just then something came flying through the air and hit him in the face. "Ow!" he exclaimed, rubbing his nose and glancing down. It was nothing more than an empty sports drink bottle. "Okay, now I'm mad," he growled.

But apparently, so was the figure, because it chose that moment to burst into flame.

Megavolt grinned. "I guess we're gonna find out who wins, electricity or fire." He cracked his knuckles. "Not to spoil it for you, but I'm pretty sure it's going to be me."

The figure tensed and raised an arm, but just then, a voice rang down from above their heads. "Aw, leaving me out of your game?" Quackerjack asked from his perch on top of the shelf. "Because I think I have the winning hand." Megavolt looked up just in time to see the duck aim his water gun, now with a hose rigged up to it, at the figure.

"Water," Quackerjack said calmly, before pulling the trigger.

The jet of water hit the fireball, knocking him back against the wall as he screamed and went dark. Quackerjack laughed loonily as he doused the figure, and finally Megavolt had to yell, "Hey, we don't want to _drown _him!"

"You're no fun," Quackerjack whined, but he took his finger off the gun's trigger and threw it aside, then flipped to the ground and landed beside Megavolt. "See?" he asked, "I told you we'd find your pyro."

Megavolt grumbled, loathe to admit to any such thing. Knocking some boxes off the shelf to stand on and keep himself out of the water on the ground, he approached the unconscious figure, Quackerjack splashing along behind him. "So, what do we have here?" the rat asked, pulling a flashlight out and flicking it on.

When he shined it down on the figure, he started in surprise, then turned to Quackerjack, who was looking back at him with his own expression of bewilderment. Neither of them said anything for a long moment.

"Megavolt," Quackerjack finally began, "you never told me the Fireball was a _girl_."


	3. Chapter 3

CHAPTER 3

The Fireball was a lot heavier than she looked. Megavolt discovered this after dragging her out of the toy store, down the street to the nearest building with a fire escape, and then hauling her up to said building's roof. He and Quackerjack, and the unconscious girl, barely escaped Darkwing Duck, who showed up just as they lifted the Fireball over the edge of the roof, Megavolt pulling on her arms from above and Quackerjack complaining loudly as he hoisted her legs over his head.

"Ow!" Quackerjack said. "Why don't _you _stand down here, Sparky? You have eye protection! Her stupid pointy shoes keep poking me in the face!"

Megavolt almost dropped her on the jester in retribution for the nickname. "Don't _call _me that!" he snapped.

Suddenly, from the street below, they heard the sound that both of them dreaded more than anything else. "I am the terror that flaps in the night!"

"Quick, quick, pull her up!" Quackerjack whispered.

Megavolt heaved and fell in a heap on the rooftop with the unconscious girl sprawled on top of him, her head lolling, as Quackerjack vaulted over the edge of the roof and crouched down, peeking over the side. Shoving her off to join Quackerjack, Megavolt watched as Darkwing's cloud of smoke appeared on the sidewalk in front of the toy store.

"I am the dusty game cartridge that you can't get clean! I…am Darkwing Duck!"

Both of them ducked out of sight, listening to the scene below.

"Gee, too bad, DW. Looks like they got away again."

"_Thank _you, Launchpad, for that brilliant observation."

"Heh, no problemo."

Darkwing had already started talking again, musing, "This _has _to have been Quackerjack. Only that crazy clown would commit a crime like this."

Ugh, just _listening _to him made Megavolt sick. While Darkwing D-Grade Poetry blathered on below, he motioned to Quackerjack and whispered, "Let's go." Quietly, they picked up the girl—Megavolt made sure that he didn't get stuck on the pointy shoe-d end—and carried her to the other end of the roof. Quackerjack swung a jump-rope over his head, then lassoed a pipe on the neighboring building's rooftop, and _then _proceeded to abandon Megavolt to carry the girl across by himself. Megavolt grumbled but slung her over his shoulder, hoping her dripping clothes and hair wouldn't short him out as he was crossing to the next building.

They repeated this process a few more times until they heard Darkwing drive off on his motorcycle, and then they collapsed, dropping the Fireball. Her leg twisted into an awkward position and Megavolt straightened it out.

"Well," he said, breathing heavily after hauling her across four rooftops, "I guess we should bring her to Negaduck."

Quackerjack massaged his shoulder, wincing. "Seems kind of a shame to hand her over when we just spent all that effort dragging her around."

"Yeah, right," Megavolt replied sarcastically. "I think I can find it in myself." He stood up and, for the first time, took a better look at her. She was a cat, he realized, with four gold hoops piercing both of her large ears. Her fur was white, but she was dressed entirely in black, from her short, belted dress, which had orange flames embroidered on the skirt hem, to her upper-arm length black gloves, to her tights, to her tall, stiletto boots. "Snappy dresser," he snorted. Her hair was black, with orange streaks twisting through it, and now that it was drying, he could tell it was curly.

"Not too impressive looking for all the damage she caused," he remarked, looking at Quackerjack.

Tsking, Quackerjack replied, "My toys should have taught you by now that size is no measure of power."

"Yeah, but you usually end up opting for giant rampaging teddy bears and huge Crying Chrissie dolls."

"I never said bigger isn't better."

Quackerjack got to his feet as well, and the two of them stood there, staring down at the Fireball. Finally, Megavolt said, "It _does _seem kind of…unfair to bring her to Negaduck when she's not even conscious."

Glancing at him, the duck replied, "Why Megs, you're not suggesting we give her a fighting chance, are you?"

"No, no," Megavolt hastily said. Then he thought about the moment that Negaduck had used the Mystic Eye of Quackzacoatl to steal his powers. "Well," he added slowly, "maybe." He looked at his wrist to check his watch, then smacked himself in the forehead, having forgotten once again that it wasn't there. "C'mon," he said. "We still have some time before Negaduck's deadline. We'll bring her back to my lighthouse and let her come around."

Quackerjack groaned. "Can we lower her down with jump-ropes?"

"No," Megavolt said flatly. "You can take her feet again."

"No fair! Why do I have to carry her feet?"

"Because you made me wear that stupid disguise."

"Spoilsport," Quackerjack muttered, but nevertheless, he wrapped his hands around the cat's ankles while Megavolt grabbed her under the arms. Maybe he was just getting used to carting her around, but she seemed lighter already.

* * *

It was two in the morning by the time they returned to the lighthouse, dragged the Fireball up the stairs, and heaved her onto the couch. Megavolt had begun wishing she'd wake up just so she could walk under her own power, but then again, that sort of assumed that she'd come with them willingly, and every interaction he'd had with her suggested the unlikeliness of that.

Of course, the fact that she _hadn't _woken up was beginning to concern him. What if they'd killed her? He found that he didn't exactly care, not for her sake, but he had a feeling that Negaduck wouldn't like that. Negaduck didn't like when others robbed him of the ability to torture and murder the people he hated.

They stood over her for a second, and then Megavolt looked at Quackerjack. "Want something to eat?" he finally asked the duck. "I think I have some leftover pizza."

Quackerjack shrugged. "Sure."

The pizza was a little past its prime, and Quackerjack spent more time arranging the toppings into faces on his slice than eating it, but Megavolt couldn't really remember the last time he'd eaten, so it did the trick. In the middle of a bite, there was a sound from the couch, and both of their gazes turned towards the figure lying there.

She was stirring. The two of them jumped to their feet, Megavolt grabbing for his electro-blaster and positioning himself in front of the couch, the gun aimed at her face.

Her eyes opened and for a moment they were filmed over with a haze of confusion, unable to focus. Then they cleared, settling first on the muzzle of the blaster, then moving backwards from the hand holding it until she met Megavolt's eyes.

"Don't try anything," he growled.

She swallowed and opened her mouth, then said in a hoarse voice, "Do you have some kind of sports drink around here?"

"Huh?" These weren't the first words he'd expected to hear from her. Begging for mercy, maybe. Not a request for a drink.

With another swallow and the same hoarseness, she said, "You know, Gander-ade or something?"

Megavolt narrowed his eyes at her and, without taking them off her or shifting the aim of his blaster, said, "Quackerjack, check the refrigerator."

"Why do I—"

"Just do it."

"How come you make us do all the work, Dirk?" Mr. Banana Brain asked, and Megavolt judged that the girl was weak enough at the moment that he could point his blaster at Quackerjack just for a second.

Quackerjack grumbled and dragged his feet but went to the refrigerator, returning with a bottle. "Orange," he said, twisting off the cap and handing it to the girl. "Hey, it matches your hair!"

She didn't respond, though, because she was busy gulping down the whole bottle. Megavolt and Quackerjack stared at her, and when she was finally finished, she flicked a strand of curly hair out of her face, reached up, and carefully pushed Megavolt's blaster aside with the back of her hand. Then, she held her hand out, offering a handshake.

"Hi," she said, her voice clear. "I'm Luminas."

Megavolt hesitated for a moment, then let his blaster fall to his side. It was aimed at the arm of the couch now, anyway, and the poor thing had been shot up enough in various fits of rage. And, having made the tacit concession that he wasn't going to fire at her, he figured he might as well shake her hand, too. "Megavolt," he said. Pointing with a thumb towards his partner-in-crime, he added, "That's Quackerjack."

She glanced towards the jester. "Thanks for the water torture back there," she said sourly.

Quackerjack giggled. "Nothing personal. We had orders."

Her eyebrows shot up. "Orders?"

Crossing his arms over his chest, Megavolt said, "Yeah, you got our boss pretty fired up the other night."

Luminas grimaced. "I was afraid of that."

"_Afraid _of that?" Megavolt asked incredulously. "What did you think was going to happen? You ruined our heist and then you set his hat on fire!"

She sat up straighter and snapped, "That was an accident! If the five of you hadn't started chasing me—"

"You shouldn't have been there in the first place! Rule number one of the super-villain code: no horning in on other villains' crimes!"

"You just made that up," she said.

Megavolt sniffed. "It doesn't matter if I made it up, it's true."

Quackerjack had been looking back and forth between them with each verbal volley, and his eyes finally crossed as he interrupted, "Are you guys going to do this for a while?" The two of them looked at him, but neither of them said anything, and Quackerjack went on, "Because I have stuff to do, so if this isn't going to be interesting I'm going to go do it."

"You don't have anything to do," Megavolt said disparagingly.

Glaring at him, Quackerjack replied, "I do too! I have a very busy schedule, Sparky!"

"Ooh, I've _told _you, don't _call _me that!"

"What are you going to do about it?" Quackerjack asked, sticking his fingers in his ears and waggling them. Megavolt pointed a finger and shot a bolt of electricity at him, which Quackerjack ducked. "You've made your point," he said with as much dignity as he could muster with his head between his feet. Bouncing back up, he said cheerfully, "Actually I just need to get one of those plastic bib things, you know, like surgeons wear? Because I don't want to get her blood all over my costume in the morning. See you, Megs!" The girl's eyes widened, but Quackerjack just waved before cartwheeling over to the railing of the spiral staircase and sliding down it.

When the door slammed shut below, she turned back to Megavolt. "Did he just imply that Negaduck's going to kill me?"

"Yep."

"He's just trying to scare me, right?"

Megavolt shrugged. "No, we're pretty sure Negaduck's going to kill you."

She seemed to get paler under her white fur. "Wow, I guess I messed this up."

It took him a second to decide whether or not he cared what she was talking about. This whole encounter was beginning to lose his interest. He had work to do. At least he was pretty sure he did, and even if he couldn't remember the last thing he'd been working on, he normally just had to sit down at his work table and something brilliant would come to him. Plus he was vaguely annoyed that she had to be there, when for the most part, he preferred being alone. But he _had _spent all that time getting her here, and it wasn't like she could leave, since his life was sort of dependent on him bringing her to Negaduck in a few hours. And she _had _saved his spark plugs the other night at the power plant.

So he asked, "Messed what up?"

"Well." She gave him an appraising look. "Look, this might kind of sound weird."

"This is St. Canard. I'm more used to weird than you might think."

"I've been following you."

"_What?!_" he demanded. "You've—how could—why—that's really _weird_!"

She drew her legs up underneath her and glared. "I _told _you you'd think so. Anyway, I mean I've been following all of you. The Fearsome Four."

"You're not supposed to call us that," he said automatically.

"What?" She just looked confused.

Waving a hand, he said, "Never mind. Why in Edison's name would you be following us?"

She heaved a sigh and planted her elbow on the arm of the couch, then rested her chin on her hand. "I guess I might as well tell you. I wanted to join the Fearsome Five. I was trying to find Negaduck but I couldn't, so I thought one of you could lead me to him."

For a long moment, he couldn't think of anything to say, besides 'if you joined the Fearsome Five there'd be six of us, and Fearsome Six just sounds stupid', and he figured that despite the questionable intellect that she'd so far shown, her math skills probably weren't poorly enough developed not to realize that. So finally, he asked, a tinge of incredulousness to his tone, "_You _wanna be in the Fearsome Five? Why?"

She looked at him like he was deranged, and considering how often he was on the receiving end of that look, he didn't appreciate it. _She _was the one who'd messed with Negaduck. "Because you're the most powerful criminal gang in the city," she said. "I'm trying to be taken seriously here and joining up with you guys is a pretty good way to do it, I figure. Plus—" And here, she paused, seemed to think about her words for a moment, and then went on, "You have super-powers, like me."

"Yeah, so?"

"_So_,I'd fit in better with you."

He shook his head, opened his mouth, and then furrowed his brow. "What was your name again?"

"Luminas."

"Right, Luminas. Why would you want to get stuck answering to Negaduck if you don't have to?"

"Because, I—wait." Giving him a confused look, she asked, "You don't like working for Negaduck?"

"Like it?" Megavolt chuckled. "I guess in the grand scheme of things it isn't so bad. He's good at what he does and we usually get some of the loot. But look, lady, Negaduck stole my electrical powers and left me to rot in prison. The constant debasement and mockery I can handle, but messing with my super-power? _That _crossed a line."

Luminas folded her arms over her chest, her brow crinkled. "If you don't like working for him, why are you following his orders and bringing me to him?"

It was a good question. In fact it was the kind of good, soul-searching question that Megavolt didn't like to ask himself, and liked even less when other people asked him. And he particularly didn't like this blue-eyed little…little…_ingénue _asking it. So he did the obvious thing, the _right _thing, and glared at her, snapping, "None of your business."

His tone didn't seem to bother her as much as he would have liked it to. She just shrugged. "Fine." Then, fixing him with a defiant stare, she added, "But I'm telling you right now, whatever happens when you bring me to Negaduck, it's not ending with me six feet under."

That made Megavolt laugh. "Sweetheart, Negaduck just throws bodies in Audubon Bay."

She stared at him. "You really know how to make a girl feel better, don't you?"

"I didn't think I was trying to."

Luminas threw her head back against the couch cushion and tossed the empty Gander-ade bottle away. "Thanks," she spat.

He watched the bottle roll across the floor for a minute, then retrieved it. Before he threw it away, though, he looked at it thoughtfully. He'd never met anyone who could control fire. It was actually pretty cool. Much as he hated to admit it, she'd fit in pretty well with the Fearsome Four—er, Five. Right kind of elemental super-power and everything.

Wait. This was stupid. Negaduck was going to shoot her full of holes and then chainsaw up whatever was left, and then maybe use a flamethrower on those pieces just for good measure. Who cared if she'd fit in with them?

Throwing the bottle in the garbage can, he asked, "So, you drink a lot of this stuff?"

She narrowed her eyes at him. "I get thirsty."

Approaching her again, he asked, "The whole fireball thing makes you thirsty?"

"You could say that." When he just waited, she sighed and said, "Yeah. Especially that full-body flame thing I've been doing lately. Useful for keeping my identity hidden, not so great for my health." She paused. "I don't suppose I could get a glass of water?"

He thought about telling her to get it herself, then remembered that she'd never been here before and nicely did it for her. When he handed it to her, he asked, "How'd you come up with the ability to control fire?"

After taking a big swig of water, she said, "I can't really _control _fire. I just…generate it, I guess."

When she didn't say anything more, he stood there, waiting for her to go on. Then he said, "That didn't answer my question."

Annoyance flashed across her face. Aha! So she _had _purposefully ignored what he'd asked. "It's a long story," she said.

Glancing at the alarm clock precariously perched on top of one corner of the refrigerator, he remarked, "We've got time. Oh! And I need to recharge my battery!" Relieved that he'd remembered, he slid the battery off his back and plugged it in to a heavily duct-taped power strip. Then he sat down on the opposite end of the couch and looked at her. "Plus, you're technically kind of my hostage. So you have to tell me."

"I don't _have _to tell you anything."

That stymied him for a second. Then he said, "You've been following me around, so I think you owe me." It occurred to him then that she really _did _owe him for bringing her here instead of to Negaduck while she'd been unconscious, but the moment to say that felt like it had already passed.

Luminas rolled her eyes. "Fine. One tragic super-villain backstory coming up." She fingered an earring and looked over the room, as though she hadn't bothered to notice any of it before then. "When I was in college I worked at the chemistry lab on campus."

"You're a chemist?" he interrupted, intrigued.

She snorted. "Hardly. It was just a job. Mostly I washed test tubes out. I was normally there pretty late—it didn't matter when the lab got cleaned up, and I guess I've always been a night person. But there were some pretty nasty characters on campus, and maybe I should have been more concerned with running into them. But, you know, when you're young you're invincible, right?"

When she looked at him and paused, apparently expecting him to agree with this, he shrugged and said, "I don't remember being young too much. My memory's really not very good." It occurred to him that he'd forgotten her name. "Sorry, what are you calling yourself again?"

Furrowing her brow, she said, "You're not kidding, are you? It's Luminas." Then she added, "Not my real name."

"I figured." Was she trying to weasel out of telling him her tragic backstory? "Anyway, you were saying? Nasty characters on campus?"

"Right." She stopped playing with the earring. "Well, one night while I was in the lab, a gang that I'd seen around a few times came in looking for something to steal. Chemicals for drugs, I figured, and it wasn't like I was loyal enough to the lab not to give the stuff to them, so I showed them where we kept everything, but by that time they were more interested in me than the chemicals. They kept asking me to go to some bar with them, and I kept saying no, and then they grabbed me and tried to drag me out with them. I freaked out and punched the closest one in the face." Taking a breath, she went on, "Then they just wanted to beat me up. Once they did, one of them had the bright idea to look around the lab and spotted some experimental liquid that I'd been told not to touch. I didn't even know what it was, but they dumped it all over me and then, just for good measure, they poured it down my throat."

"What did it taste like?"

"What?"

Megavolt waved a hand. "Nothing, sorry. Go on."

Luminas smiled mirthlessly. "They left me in there. I couldn't move because they'd beaten me up so badly. One of them had been smoking the whole time and as they left, he threw his cigarette butt back into the room. It landed on some paperwork that one of the professors hadn't put away. The whole lab went up in flames. Sprinkler system never went off. Everything was destroyed before the fire department got there—the college was lucky the whole building didn't burn down."

Megavolt looked at her, his eyebrows raised. "And you…?"

"The firemen found me. Figured I'd passed out from smoke inhalation, but they didn't understand why I wasn't burned. I didn't either. When they asked me about my bruises, I played dumb and said I must have hit my head on a counter when I passed out. Anyway, they wanted to bring me to the hospital but I said I was fine and went home to go to bed. Woke up the next morning feeling stiff, like I'd been beaten up, but definitely not like I'd just been burned to death. I went down to the dining hall for breakfast and while I was sitting there, I spotted the guys that had come after me." Her smile grew darker. "That was when I found out that my notoriously short fuse had just become literal. My whole body burst into flame before I even knew what I was doing. You can check the New Duckton papers, but I'm pretty sure the whole dining hall burned down."

There was silence for a long moment. Finally, Megavolt said, "That's…tragic."

"Like I said."

He mulled over the story. Something about it didn't seem quite…right, but hey, if she wanted to lie about it, it was none of his business. Instead, he asked, "Did you get revenge? On the guys?"

Something odd flickered in her eyes, and then they hardened. "Yeah. It was the very first thing on my agenda."

"Well," he said, reaching over with a fist and giving her a companionable bump on the shoulder. It seemed to startle her. "I've been at this since high school, so you're doing better than me. At least," he said, confusion drifting across his mind and clouding that certainty, "I'm pretty sure I've been at this since high school. Is that right?" He thought about it, then brightened. "Yes! I was just at my high school reunion and I ran into the cretin that did this to me!"

Luminas seemed happy to have his attention off of her. "So, did _you _get revenge?"

"No," he replied with a glower. "_Darkwing Duck _had to show up and ruin everything, as usual." There was something nagging at him about that whole night, something that he was pretty sure he should be remembering, something about Darkwing himself, but the more he tried, the further it seemed to slip away. He shrugged. It might come back to him eventually.

"Right, Dark—Dark—D—" She yawned widely, then finished sheepishly, "—wing Duck. Your hometown hero."

Megavolt snorted. "More like our hometown ego. Hey," he added abruptly, noticing her eyelids drooping. "Are you tired or something?"

"It's been a tiring couple days," she mumbled.

"Oh." He looked around. "If you want to take a nap…" But her chin was already falling onto her chest, so he got up. "Do you want a blanket?" he asked hesitantly.

"Nuh uh," she said, curling onto her side, her eyes closed. "Don't need one…warm enough…"

It didn't seem possible that someone could fall asleep so quickly. Hadn't she just been talking a second ago? But after studying her for a second, it was clear that she was, indeed, out like a light. He glanced at the alarm clock again. Maybe he'd get some sleep, too. After all, the more well rested one was during a meeting with Negaduck, the better.

* * *

The sun bursting over the horizon woke Megavolt and he opened his eyes, squinting at the window which he'd forgotten to pull the curtains across when he'd come to bed a few hours ago. Shielding his eyes with a hand, he sat up and glanced towards the clock, where he'd thoughtfully stuck a note reminding himself about the meeting with Negaduck that he was due at shortly.

He stretched and got out of bed, pulling on a clean undershirt and then his jumpsuit before peeking out the door, which he'd left open in the event that…uh…what was her name…right, in case Luminas had gotten it into her head to try to sneak out while he was sleeping.

She hadn't moved, though, so he positioned his goggles over his eyes and went out to wake her up. "Hey," he said, once he was standing over her. No response. He tried kicking one leg of the couch, though with his slippers on it wasn't too effective. Anyway, all it did was make her snort a little in her sleep. Megavolt rolled his eyes and after a second, he reached down and poked her in the shoulder with a finger.

It was probably the shock that woke her up—which had been an accident—not the poking, and she sat bolt upright, her eyes wild for a second. Then they fell on him and she seemed to remember where she was. Rubbing her shoulder, she asked sourly, "What was that for?"

"Oh." He looked at his hands and realized he hadn't put his gloves on. "Sorry. That happens."

"I guess it would if you're completely electrified." She rubbed at her eyes. "You'll have to tell me how that happened to you sometime."

Megavolt was hunting for his gloves, and, finding them, replied, "Maybe if you survive this morning."

"Right," she muttered. While he pulled on the rest of his costume, she watched him, twisting a curl of hair around one of her own gloved fingers, and finally she asked, "So you're just going to let him kill me."

Clipping his extension cord to his belt, Megavolt replied, "Why wouldn't I?"

"Because I helped you out the other night at the power plant."

He felt a twinge of sympathy for her but squashed it before things got out of hand. "Hey, _you're _the one that wanted to be in the Fearsome Five. This is how we do things. Negaduck gives an order, you follow it. But look on the bright side, he's tried to kill all of us once or twice, and we're still here." Patting her on the shoulder as he walked past her towards the staircase, he added, "You might still make it."

When he didn't hear anything behind him, he turned around to look at her. She was staring at her palm, where a tiny flame was burning. "Hey," he said, "don't start that. Like Quacky said, this isn't anything personal."

She looked up at him and arched an eyebrow, then brushed past him as she walked down the stairs. "Rule number two of the super-villain code," she said sardonically. "Everything's personal."

* * *

Bushroot yanked the door to Negaduck's warehouse hideout open before Megavolt could even put his hand on the knob, making the rat jump back in surprise. "Oh!" Bushroot exclaimed. "Thank goodness you're here. Did you find him? Liquidator and I went all over the city and there wasn't a trace of him—of course we ran into Darkwing Duck, but no fire person anywhere—"

"Her," Megavolt said, yanking Luminas forward by the arm, since she'd shown a certain recalcitrance to get out of the car and come with him. "Negaduck here yet?"

"No," Bushroot replied, moving aside to let Megavolt and his unwilling companion through.

Neither was Quackerjack, Megavolt could immediately see once he'd stepped inside, which explained why Bushroot hadn't been up to date on the previous evening's happenings. Liquidator was leaning against the wall right next to the door, and when Megavolt and Luminas had taken a few steps inside and Bushroot had closed the door behind them, the watery canine moved between the two of them. Megavolt jumped back to avoid shorting out.

"Today's super-villains are full of surprises," Liquidator said, staring down at her with those creepy, hollow eyes of his. "It may be a man's underworld, but the modern woman can wreak just as much havoc as her male counterparts—and cause just as much trouble for them."

Luminas seemed just as uneasy with Liquidator's proximity as Megavolt normally was. She was leaning backwards, trying to put as much distance between the two of them as she could without physically taking a step back. "You know," she said, "this is really all just a bit of a misunderstanding."

Joining Liquidator, Bushroot said, "Negaduck doesn't really like misunderstandings."

"The understatement of the century," Liquidator added with a smirk.

After a moment, the plant-duck offered her a hand. "Reginald Bushroot. You can just call me Bushroot. Everyone does."

She shook his hand hesitantly. "Luminas."

Backing off, Liquidator said, "It's bad business sense to get invested in a customer before a contract is finalized."

Bushroot shook his head. "Oh, come on. We can at least be nice to her before the boss weed whacks her."

"You're the nice one, Reggie. No one has ever accused the Liquidator of that."

"Excuse me," Luminas said suddenly. When all three of them looked at her, she asked, "Does anybody think there's even the _slightest _possibility that Negaduck won't kill me?"

Megavolt, Bushroot, and Liquidator exchanged glances, and then Bushroot shrugged and said, "Anything's possible." Then, the plant-duck stiffened. "He's coming."

The three of them scattered, leaving Luminas alone in the middle of the room. Megavolt took pity on her and grabbed her arm, pulling her back to his spot along the wall. "Bushy can communicate telepathically with plants," he said for her benefit, in case she wondered why they'd all believed his pronouncement on Negaduck's imminent arrival.

"Oh," she said, clearly not caring one bit.

The door banged open and Negaduck stalked in, Quackerjack, looking miserable, at his side. Without any kind of greeting—which might have been a good thing—the malevolent masked mallard said, "The rest of you losers better be here instead of hanging out in the parking lot like Quackerjack."

"I was just about to come inside, boss—"

"Shut it, Chuckles," Negaduck said. "You said you actually managed to hunt down that flame-thrower?"

"Megavolt helped," Quackerjack said, obviously hedging his bets about whether this fact was going to get him into Negaduck's good graces or not.

"So where is he?" Negaduck barked.

Unexpectedly, Luminas stepped forward without any prompting or use of physical force. "_She _is right here."

Negaduck stared at her for a long moment, his usual simmering anger tempered by surprise. Finally, finished sizing her up, he asked in a dangerous tone, "Do you have any idea what I do to people who make me mad?"

She smiled cockily, and Megavolt gave her points for bravado. "Your henchmen have given me a pretty good idea. Listen, Negaduck, I get the picture. I messed things up for you at the museum the other night, you want my head. Here's a better idea." She paused to fix him with a confident stare. "The name's Luminas. I can sling fireballs at this city's finest, not to mention Darkwing Duck, until this town burns to the ground. And—" She grinned at him. "I think you should let me join the Fearsome Five."


	4. Chapter 4

CHAPTER 4

Drake Mallard leaned forward intently, studying the objects on his kitchen table. There was a connection. There was _always_ a connection. _No_ criminal was capable of leaving the scene of a crime completely free of incriminating clues—

"Wow, Dad, if you wanted some Gander-ade, I'm pretty sure we have a whole six-pack in the fridge."

"Oh, good morning, Gos," Drake said distractedly.

Gosalyn slid into a chair and watched him. "Sooo, big night? An empty Gander-aide bottle, a torn up Whiffle Boy display, and some dirty flyers for game night at Seventh Street Toys." When he didn't answer, she propped her elbow on the table. "Are you _sure_ you didn't get a concussion at the power plant the other night?"

At that, Drake straightened up. "I'll have you know that this isn't just dirt on these flyers." He pointed an emphatic finger at them. "It's _soot_." This left his daughter less than impressed, so he went on, "Take a close look at this Whiffle Boy display. At first glance, you will notice it's been massively mangled, and you might assume that St. Canard's lunatic toymaker Quackerjack was behind it."

With a yawn, Gosalyn said, "It's kind of early for Darkwing mode, Dad."

"What? Oh." Drake laughed sheepishly. "Well, as I was saying, _I_ don't know anyone else who would bother to mutilate a cardboard floor stand this thoroughly, but then I remembered—I've _seen_ this display before. It held the tie-in merchandise for _Whiffle Boy Laser Blaster Cannon Pinball_, and it had LEDs all along the edges."

"Oh yeah!" Gosalyn said brightly. "We stood next to it _forever_ the day that we had to go get your copy of the game signed—"

"Yes, well," Drake interrupted, "whatever the reason I happen to remember, it seems to me that if Quackerjack was there destroying Whiffle Boy toys, then Megavolt may have been along for the ride to steal some lights. The bottle, on the other hand," he went on, tapping at his beak, "suggests something else entirely."

"Is that one of the stolen ones, DW?" Launchpad's voice asked as he entered the kitchen.

Drake watched him pour a bowl of cereal for himself, then said dryly, "I haven't run the serial number through the Gander-ade database yet, believe it or not."

"Want me to get on that for you?"

When Gosalyn giggled, Drake just rolled his eyes. "That's okay, LP."

Gosalyn picked up the bottle. "So what gives, someone's stealing Gander-ade?"

Plucking the bottle from her hands, Drake replied, "Half the convenience stores in the city have been hit. Whoever's doing it doesn't take anything else, just cases and cases of the stuff."

"Do you think it's Megavolt and Quackerjack?" Gosalyn asked.

Drake shook his head. "No. I think it's the same fiery fiend I ran into at the power plant the other night. But this is the second time evidence has presented itself that this new fire-throwing villain and Megavolt are working together—and if Quackerjack's in on it too, we may have a problem on our hands." He shook his head and flicked the sooty flyers away. "I _hate_ it when my enemies team up. And I hate it even more when I don't even know who one of them is."

Gosalyn's mouth was hanging open. "Wait," she said, "you didn't tell me that you met a new villain who can control _fire_! That's cool, Dad! Can I come along when you go and beat him the first time?"

"No," Drake said sternly. "You shouldn't be along with me anyway—I mean, even if I _do_ always beat the bad guys—people like Megavolt and Bushroot and Liquidator are dangerous, super-powered jerks. But at least I know what to expect from them."

"More or less, at least," Launchpad added helpfully.

Which just reminded him of the fiasco at the power plant. Drake grit his teeth. "Yes, exactly, Launchpad. But my point is, Gosalyn, I don't want you around any new super-villains. They're dangerous and unpredictable, and usually crazy."

"At least not until you get a handle on them?" she asked innocently.

"Yes, exactl—" He stopped and glared at her as she was hopping up from the table. "Now, wait a second, young lady, I'm not sure you take St. Canard's criminals seriously enough—"

Gosalyn smiled at him. "I take them plenty seriously, Dad. I just know that in the end you always win."

"Well." Drake puffed out his chest. "Be that as it may—"

"So that's why I'm coming along just as soon as you know who the Flame-Thrower is," Gosalyn added.

She departed before he could argue with her, and Drake looked at his sidekick and housemate. "Launchpad," he said, "do you ever get the feeling that the one personality in this city that I'll never overcome is my own daughter's?"

Launchpad chuckled. "All the time, DW. All the time."

* * *

Negaduck's warehouse was silent. Well, not silent. There was never _really _silence; even when everything around you was quiet you could hear that annoying ringing in your ears, which Megavolt could rarely seem to tune out, actually. A motorcycle roared by outside; a bird chirped somewhere near the door. Quackerjack jingled every time he shifted, and even a faint burbling was audible from Liquidator. But Negaduck and Luminas didn't move, staring each other down.

And then, Negaduck laughed. The sound was so unexpected that the rest of them jumped. "You've gotta be kidding me," he said, still chuckling. "_You_? Why would I let _you_ join _my_ criminal gang? You're lucky I haven't killed you already."

Luminas took a deep breath, apparently inoculated against the threat to her life by Megavolt and company's repeated mention of it. "Because I'm a super-villain," she said, "and I'm good at it."

"_Are _you?" Negaduck asked, his tone dripping with vitriol. "Name a couple big heists for me then, dollface."

She bristled. "Well, they weren't _here_, I just got to St. Canard—"

"Oh, I'm more up on current events than you might think," Negaduck interrupted, studying his fingers. "Have you worked with the Beagle Boys over in Duckburg?"

"Er…I met them in a bar once…"

"Taken out Gizmoduck?"

"Uh, he probably doesn't know I exist—"

"Have you robbed a single bank?"

"I, um, haven't needed that kind of cash yet…"

Negaduck shook his head. "And let me guess, you haven't had a single run-in with Darkwing Duck."

"Yes, I have!" Luminas said triumphantly.

Before she could go on, Negaduck waved a dismissive hand. "I know all about the fiasco at the power plant. Hiding in the shadows and popping out after Megavolt's done most of the work doesn't count."

"Gee, thanks, Boss—" Megavolt began, surprised that Negaduck was giving him that kind of credit.

"Shut up, Sparky," the mallard said without looking at him. Crossing his arms over his chest and glaring at Luminas, he said, "So you have a blank résumé. You've caused _negligible _mindless destruction, you haven't taken out a single doofus hero, and I would guess that, were I to obtain your criminal record, it would be thinner than Bushroot's list of friends. No, wait." He held up a hand. "_Nothing_ could be that miniscule."

Luminas gave him a heated glare. "Look, I've moved around a lot, okay? I've been on the run. I killed some people back in New Duckton, and—"

"Oh, sure," Negaduck said. "What did you do, eyelash-bat them to death?" Flames licked at her fingers and that was the first thing that seemed to interest Negaduck about her at all. "Your super-power might be worth something to me," he admitted casually.

She scoffed. "Yeah, I've heard about what other people's super-powers mean to you."

Negaduck studied her. "You know, part of me enjoys the fact that you have the guts to mouth off to me. Unfortunately for you, it's a pretty small part." Making a dismissive motion with his hand, he said, "I think I'll have to pass. But try coming back when you've done something besides rob convenience stores to steal Gander-ade." When Luminas stiffened, he chuckled nastily. "What, you think I hadn't figured out who was doing that? Sorry, Lumens, or whatever your name is, but I'm surrounded by enough losers on a daily basis. I don't need another one hanging around."

She remained very quiet and very still for a moment. Then she said, in a tone that suggested she was using all of her self-control to keep from yelling, "You know who I think the loser is?"

"Oh, I wonder what you're going to say?" Negaduck said mockingly. "I'm going to be _so_ offended that a two-bit chimney starter thinks I'm a _loser_."

Her mouth shut and from the looks of it, she was clamping her teeth together. Maybe, Megavolt thought, this wasn't going to go so badly after all.

Then she raised an arm and shot a jet of flame straight at Negaduck's hat.

With an inarticulate shout, the duck ripped the fedora off his head and stamped on it until the flames were gone. The rest of the Fearsome Five didn't move a muscle, except Megavolt, who put a hand briefly to his eyes and shook his head. When he looked up again, Luminas had taken at least one step back, Negaduck's fists were clenched at his sides, and his teeth were gritted. "You have five seconds to get out of my sight," he snarled. "After that, I'm going to stop caring that I just picked up this outfit from the dry cleaners!"

For one absurd moment, it looked like she was going to object. Then her senses returned to her—sort of—because she turned, without looking at anybody, and walked towards the warehouse door, back rigidly straight. No doubt she was going for a dignified exit. Megavolt almost wanted to speak up and tell her that Negaduck was serious about the five seconds, but then again, she was about to find that out firsthand.

"Time's up," Negaduck announced, pulling out a rifle and firing it.

It blew a hole in the wall, missing her only by about a foot, and Luminas bolted the remaining few feet to the door, wrenching it open and leaving it swinging behind her.

"Well," Negaduck said, "would you look at that. Getting up early put me in a bad mood, but this day's already been productive. The only thing that could make it even better would be if I didn't have to look at the four of you…"

The hint didn't have to be given twice. Megavolt, Quackerjack, Bushroot, and Liquidator booked it out the door, and Negaduck slammed it shut behind them, locks clicking into place in case any of them changed their minds—though why they would was beyond Megavolt.

He glanced around the parking lot, but Luminas was, unsurprisingly, already gone. For a purported super-villain, she was kind of a disaster, Megavolt thought. Maybe he should have expected it. Anyone who shot flames from her hands probably wouldn't be the most emotionally stable person in the world.

Quackerjack produced his pogo stick and hopped onto it. "It's been fun," he said with a wave, "but I have toys to create and gamers to terrify—"

"Hold it," Liquidator said, grabbing Quackerjack by the collar of his enormous ruff just as the jester was about to bounce away. As Quackerjack made strangled sounds and massaged his throat, Liquidator said, "I want to discuss an opportunity with the three of you. Where can we meet?"

There was silence. Quackerjack coughed and said, "I'd offer my toy factory, but the thing is, see, I was working on these toy soldiers, and somehow they started strapping on bomb vests and taking out everything around them…"

"Tasteful, as always," Liquidator sneered. "What's the problem?"

"They set up a perimeter around the door so if you go inside you might get your foot blown off." Quackerjack looked musing. "I'm going to have to figure out a way around them…I could probably rappel in from the ceiling…"

Bushroot looked despairing at this, and, with a long-suffering shake of his head, offered, "We can go to my greenhouse. It's safe."

"_Is _it?" Megavolt asked meaningfully, rubbing at his backside where one of Bushroot's plants had "defended" itself against him with a large and very pointed spike. All he'd been doing was trying to re-charge! So maybe he took out a few daisies. Bushroot could grow more. Luckily its aim had been bad.

Liquidator snapped his fingers. "Safety is always a relative term when it comes to super-villains. Reggie's greenhouse it is."

"And when should I expect the company?" Bushroot asked, not sounding all that pleased about the prospect.

The watery canine grinned before swirling into a sewer grate. "Last one there's Darkwing bait."

* * *

The Ratcatcher roared down the road, morning sunlight glinting off its newly waxed body, as Darkwing kept a watchful eye out for any potential crimes. Not that there were likely to be any at this time—heck, there was still rush hour traffic—

"DW, look out!" Launchpad's shout made Darkwing glance towards the traffic in front of him, which was at a complete standstill.

He slammed on the brakes and the Ratcatcher came to a stop just in time, its front tire inches from the bumper of the car in front of him. "Thanks," Darkwing said sheepishly to his sidekick, who had resumed eating the box of donuts that they'd picked up for breakfast. "Guess my mind's someplace else."

"No problemo," Launchpad said. "What're sidekicks for?" Popping another donut in his mouth, he asked, "Thinking about that new villain, huh?"

Drumming his fingers on the handlebars and craning his neck to see what was causing the hold-up, Darkwing said, "Thinking about him and trying to figure out what his game is. If we assume that he's the one grabbing all the Gander-ade, then there aren't any unexplained crimes in the city."

"Well, that's good, right?"

"Good but boring," Darkwing grumbled. "Anyway, we have a new super-villain on our hands here. They normally go for something a lot flashier for their first crime in St. Canard than stealing bottled drinks. Are you _sure_ there was nothing on the crime report for this morning?"

Launchpad shook his head. "Not a thing."

The brake lights of the car in front of him blinked off and Darkwing took his own foot off the Ratcatcher's brake pedal and put it on the accelerator, ready to move out, only to have to frantically stop again as the car only inched forward by about a foot. Darkwing blew on the Ratcatcher's horn—a moral victory, if nothing else—and slumped over the handlebars, then glanced over as his sidekick, still happily chowing down. "Say, LP, any of those donuts left?"

"You're in luck," Launchpad said cheerfully. "Last one!"

Darkwing took it and ate it happily, musing that a decent criminal would steal _donuts_, not sports drinks. Then again, the donut had made him thirsty, thirsty enough that a Gander-ade sounded pretty good. There was a convenience on the other side of the street, and as the traffic was still going nowhere, Darkwing revved the Ratcatcher, made a U-turn, and zoomed into an available parking spot in front of it.

"Is this place going to be hit next?" Launchpad asked, sounding excited.

"Er," Darkwing said, "that's…exactly what I'm going in to check on! Just a little investigative work by this city's most vigilant vigilante!"

"I'll come in and scope the place out, too," Launchpad said.

Regretting his pronouncement slightly—he really just wanted to get downtown to the art museum, or the toy store—Darkwing said, "Oh, sure. Hey, would you mind grabbing a Gander-ade for me?"

The two of them entered the store, which was mostly empty, besides a few commuters buying a cheap cup of coffee. For a few minutes, Darkwing paced around, making a great show of studying the drink cases which were, indeed, fully stocked with Gander-ade. Launchpad picked a couple out and headed up to the cash register, where he got in line behind a young woman.

"Oh—darn it, I don't have any change," the woman at the register was saying as she dug around in her pockets. "Look, I'm only ten cents short, can't you give it to me?" Darkwing perked up, his natural gallant tendencies aroused.

"Sorry, lady, that ten cents comes out of my paycheck," the clerk said boredly.

Her ears swiveled backwards in irritation but she shoved her bottle of Gander-ade towards the clerk. "Fine," she snapped. "You're lucky you still _have_ any of this stuff to sell."

Darkwing stepped in at that moment, a dime in his fingers. "Excuse me, I think I have this covered," he said grandly. The cashier blew a bubble with her gum and took the ten cents, along with the change that the surprised girl had put down on the counter. "Thank-you-come-again," she said in a monotone.

"Er, thanks," the young woman said to Darkwing, grabbing her bottle and stepping away from the counter. She was dressed like she'd been out all night clubbing, in a short black dress and tall black boots, and black gloves shoved into one pocket.

"The pleasure was mine, madam," he said, tipping his fedora to her.

She wiped her hands on her dress, and Darkwing noticed there was soot in the creases of her palms. Without saying another word, though, she slipped out the door. Darkwing watched her go, his eyes narrowed slightly. His keenly honed vigilante senses were going off, but he couldn't put his finger on why. With a shrug, he turned back towards Launchpad, who had just finished paying for their own Gander-ades.

"Find anything, DW?" Launchpad asked cheerfully.

No, not a thing, but he wasn't about to admit that. Darkwing cleared his throat. "Considering that this is one of the few convenience stores that hasn't been robbed yet, it seems prudent to keep a watchful eye on it." He peered around, then leaned closer to Launchpad and said in a low tone, "We'll be back tonight. If our fiery felon wants his Gander-ade, he'll have to get through Darkwing Duck first."

He twisted open his bottle and took a swig of it, then choked. This villain, whoever he was, sure wasn't stealing Gander-ade to _drink_ the stuff. Blech. Whatever he was doing with it, Darkwing intended to find out.

* * *

Megavolt rapped on the door to Bushroot's greenhouse, still stewing about Quackerjack's antics during the drive over. During those times that Megavolt was in a good mood, Quackerjack was…fun. Madder than a March hare, of course, but he wasn't bad company, and there was definitely a…a…heck, a kinship between them. They could be, Megavolt guessed, close, depending on the situation.

Today had not been one of those situations, and it perhaps went without saying that Megavolt wasn't in a good mood. That idiot jester had spent the first three-quarters of the drive bouncing all over the road in front of Megavolt's car on that stupid pogo stick of his—and once or twice actually on _top _of the car—causing Megavolt to side-swipe a semi, two minivans, several innocent street lights, and an electric car, whose owner he'd shouted his apologies to. After he'd skidded along the median for several feet, he'd gotten fed up, stuck a finger out the window, and zapped Quackerjack, timing his bolt of electricity for maximum pain and injury, possibly death depending on how and where the duck hit the ground.

There was a bang on the greenhouse glass and Megavolt jumped back, sparks flying of his hat, as he frantically searched for the source of the sound with every intention of frying it. Bushroot's plants would _not_ come after him again—

But when he looked through the glass wall, he could see Bushroot's pet Venus fly trap pawing at it, tongue hanging out while it slobbered everywhere.

"Who is it, Spike?" came Bushroot's voice. "If it's that Quackerware salesman again, I swear—oh, it's you."

"Those Quackerware people won't leave me alone, either," Megavolt said as Bushroot opened the door. "I've actually been tempted to buy that stuff once or twice, it holds up really well when they use it as a shield against my voltage." Spike jumped at him and Megavolt swatted at the Venus fly trap before Bushroot pulled it away.

As the door shut behind them, water poured out of the hose, coalescing into Liquidator as he said, "Don't be fooled by inferior products and deceptive marketing!"

"Huh, you should talk," Megavolt said.

"It takes an expert swindler to know one," Liquidator replied with a grin.

Looking around the greenhouse, Megavolt asked, "So why are we here?" A palm frond was dangling in his face, and he brushed it aside impatiently. That elicited a flash of panic in Bushroot's eyes before the plant-duck hastily motioned to the tree, which then lifted its leaves higher.

"All in good time," Liquidator said. "We can't have a meeting of the Fearsome _Four_ without our fourth member, after all."

Bushroot raised his eyebrows, probably at Liquidator's inflection, and Megavolt said casually, "He got held up."

Not for long, though, because the jester arrived shortly, his energy moderately dissipated, his affection for Megavolt noticeably cooler, and his pogo stick, the rat was pleased to see, significantly mangled. The two of them bickered until Quackerjack picked up one of Bushroot's potted flowers and slung it at Megavolt's head—at that point, the plant-duck intervened and insisted everyone just calm down.

"Liquidator," Bushroot said, clutching several plants to his chest, "maybe you can tell us what this is about before Quackerjack destroys any more of my violets?"

"The Liquidator is only too happy to comply," he replied with a wide smile, then motioned for the others to move closer. "It occurs to me that our emerging fiery competitor may have just provided us with an advantage in today's overcrowded super-villain market," he said.

"How so?" Bushroot asked curiously.

Megavolt cocked his head, an odd, and unexpected, pang of guilt worming through him at the way everything had gone with Luminas. "Yeah," he echoed. "How so?"

Liquidator gave him a look that made Megavolt uncomfortable. He always seemed like he knew what was going on in other people's heads, and Megavolt didn't appreciate it. "We can use her as leverage," Liquidator said. "Negaduck wants to be a controlling interest in our limited liability company—"

"Who has liability? Not me," Quackerjack giggled.

Ignoring him, Liquidator went on, "—but we're not happy with the financial arrangement."

"My dignity's not too happy with the arrangement, either," Bushroot muttered.

Liquidator put a hand on his shoulder. "Exactly."

"So what are you suggesting?" Megavolt asked, putting his hands on his hips.

"I'm suggesting we help her," Liquidator said flatly. "For the low, low price of being in eternal debt to the four of us, the lovely Luminas can join the city's most fearsome villains, provided we give Negaduck an incentive to sign the dotted line and agree. The Liquidator can even offer her an interest free, introductory rate."

Bushroot glanced at him, looking bemused. "I'm surprised—I figured you'd be the last one to want her to join. Won't a sixth member cut into your profit margins?"

Raising a finger, Liquidator said, "Ah, but as you so astutely pointed out, my green friend, you can't put a price on dignity."

Quackerjack perked up at this. "You're not saying we use her to take out Negaduck, are you?"

One of Liquidator's eyebrows arched while Bushroot's and Megavolt's eyes snapped from Quackerjack back to him. Was _that_ what Licky was implying? Sure, all of them had thought about killing Negaduck before—if anyone deserved it, it was him—but he'd proven his stranglehold over them time and again. And the plan was to have _Luminas_ take him out? Luminas was…well, she didn't exactly seem all that on top of…anything.

"Haven't you ever heard of subliminal advertising?" the dog asked.

"Wait, wait," Megavolt said, waving his hands in front of him. Bushroot looked terrified at the mere suggestion of doing Negaduck in, which put them in rare total agreement. He glared at Liquidator and jabbed a finger into the side of his own head, demanding, "Are you insane? _Last _time we tried to kill Negaduck—"

"—there was an unlikely and unfortunate intersection of events and market factors that even the savvy businessman couldn't have predicted." He glanced at Bushroot, which seemed to soften his expression. "Of course, I would never make any business decision without one hundred percent approval from all board members. Well." He paused and grinned wolfishly. "With one exception."

"I don't approve," Megavolt snapped.

Giving him a cool look, Liquidator replied, "Market research only suggests that we keep the option open. And it would further the risk-reward ratio to have someone around who owes us."

"Licky has a good point," Quackerjack offered. "Negaduck controls the game and I'm tired of playing by his rules. _I_ say we do it." He folded his arms over his chest. "He stopped playing fair a long time ago. Besides, we don't _have_ to send Fireball in to kill Negs. Not right away at least."

"So now we're sending her in to kill him?" Megavolt asked.

Quackerjack's eyes gleamed. "Aw, did you get attached to her?"

"No!" he snapped. "But, you know, she's—we were all starting out once, and I just think…" He was seriously regretting ever opening his mouth. Because he _didn't_ care about Luminas. He certainly wasn't _attached_ to her, the idea was preposterous. He'd only _met_ her yesterday! And frankly, if he never saw her again, it wouldn't bother him in the slightest. "…I just think she should have a chance to make it," he finished lamely.

The three of them stared at him for a long moment, then Liquidator said, "With this business plan, she'll have it."

Bushroot tapped thoughtfully at his bill with a leafy hand. "And if we _do_ decide it's time to get rid of Negaduck," he said slowly, "who takes the fall when it doesn't work?"

"If, Reggie, _if_," Liquidator said, drawing a doubtful nod from Bushroot. "And all projections indicate that laying the blame solely at the high-heeled feet of our soon-to-be newest member is just good business sense."

After a moment of thoughtful silence, the plant-duck gave a resigned shrug. "I have a feeling I might regret this, but okay."

Then they all looked at Megavolt, who narrowed his eyes and asked, "I wanna know who's going to talk Negaduck into this."

"The Liquidator will sacrifice himself on the altar of goodwill," the dog said with a grin. "Now, if that's your only concern, are you in, Megavolt?"

He rolled his eyes. Not much point in holding out when they'd all agreed. Besides, Liquidator might _say_ that he wouldn't make any decisions without all of their go-aheads, but he knew perfectly well that two out of three was close enough for the dog. "Oh, fine."

"Good," Liquidator said with finality. "Then if there are no further questions for the presenter, I have an appointment with our grand and glorious leader."

In a moment, he had disappeared back into the hose, leaving the three of them standing in his wake. Quackerjack picked up a few empty pots and began juggling them, and it was a mark of how deep in thought Bushroot was that he didn't stop the jester. Eventually, Bushroot looked at Megavolt and said, "If Negaduck agrees, you should probably be the one to track Luminas down."

This took Megavolt completely by surprise. It wasn't that he'd forgotten, exactly, why he was there, but his mind had drifted to a vaguely formed idea, already in blueprint form in his mind, that seemed promising, though he'd need to get it down on paper to really tell and yeah, it kind of made sense that he'd find Luminas—

His mind came to a screeching halt, and then he looked at Bushroot and demanded, "Why _me_? You have _legs_, don't you?"

Bushroot held his hands out. "Well, yes, but it's just—you came to Negaduck's hideout together, I assumed she'd spent the night with you—oh, no, I mean, that's _not _what I meant—"

"Keep talking, Bushbrain," Megavolt growled, his fingers crackling with electricity. "I could really go for some _fried_ vegetables."

Putting a hand to his forehead, Bushroot said, "I just meant that you've spent some actual time with her. If she's going to trust any of us, it's going to be you, right?"

"I don't get the feeling she's very trusting."

"Well, you know what I meant."

"No, actually, I don't," Megavolt said, crossing his arms over his chest. "_Just _because I let her come back to my lighthouse, that doesn't mean I have some sort of special…_thing_ with her or something."

Bushroot opened his mouth to respond, then closed it again. Finally, he said, "Look, if it's all the same to you, I already have to deal with _one_ person on a regular basis who can burn me to a crisp. It's not really the most pleasant sensation, so can you just…I don't know, take this one for the team?"

Megavolt stared at him, his eyes narrowed, until he grudgingly acceded, "I guess Liquidator went to see Negaduck."

"Yeah," Bushroot said eagerly, "and that's definitely not going to be fun."

"And I _guess_ I'm less likely to scare her off than Jingles over there," Megavolt said, indicating Quackerjack with a jerk of his head.

"Yep, that's for sure," Bushroot agreed with an emphatic nod.

Megavolt gave him a sidelong look. "_And _I'm not afraid of everything, like you."

Bushroot continued nodding until Megavolt's words sank in. "Hey!" When Megavolt just shrugged and grinned nastily, the plant-duck scowled and asked impatiently, "So, will you do it?"

Making a face, Megavolt said, for the second time that day, and feeling even _more_ like he was going to regret it than the first time, "Oh, _fine_."

* * *

Negaduck was washing blood off his hands when Liquidator flowed under the door, having already knocked and received a gruff affirmative that he could enter. "Can't you just come in like a normal person?" the duck asked.

"The Liquidator prides himself on being as far from a normal person as it's possible to get."

"Yeah, no kidding," Negaduck muttered sarcastically. "What's this about?"

Forming himself into his normal canine form, Liquidator said, "My fearsome fellows and I have been discussing the business proposition that Megavolt's young associate presented this morning."

With a sneer, Negaduck asked, "Oh yeah? Did you find it as pathetic as I did?"

"I consider any deal presented to me from every angle," Liquidator said. "And I think we should give serious consideration to Luminas's request to join the Fearsome Five."

Negaduck rolled his eyes, turned the faucet off, and dried his hands. "_First_ of all, if she joined, we couldn't _be_ the Fearsome Five anymore, and I happen to like the name. Second of all, I didn't like her."

"The Liquidator feels compelled to point out that you don't like any of us," he said with his most charming smile.

It had never sold Negaduck on anything, and that trend didn't change now. "You know, _Bud_, I hope you're not trying to pull something," he said, sitting down at a desk and picking up a gun. "If you are, I might just have to pay your family a little _visit_."

Liquidator stiffened and his smile vanished. He'd prepared himself for this tactic. It didn't make him any less angry to have it used on him, though. "There's no need for that. I've always adhered to the terms and conditions of our contract."

"Contract, schmontract," the duck said with a shrug, cleaning the muzzle of a handgun. "You should know I only hold up my end of a bargain for as long as I feel like it."

Taking a step forward, Liquidator snarled, "Leave them out of this, Negaduck."

Without glancing up at him, Negaduck said casually, "It's pretty ironic, isn't it? I mean, look at you. Nothing can hurt you. You can be frozen solid, crushed, evaporated, turned to cement, and in the end, you always get out of it. But I have to admit, _Licky_, out of all of you bozos, you've been the easiest to keep in line." He looked up, smiling nastily. "Score one for the cold and heartless, right? _We _don't have anybody to worry about. By the way, what are your sons' names, again?" The two villains glared at each other, and then Negaduck went on, "Of course, it seems to me that I might not even have to go as far as your estranged family. Things seem pretty cozy between you and the rest of the witless wonders. I might just decide to dispose of one of them…"

Liquidator just smiled coldly. You didn't get to the top in the St. Canard business world by being an honest businessman. A good lie was as useful a tool in the arsenal of a salesman as a wide, reassuring smile. "The Fearsome Five has always been about increasing my own profits. Do what you want to the rest of my villainous co-workers. This is just business."

"Hm." Negaduck eyed him, and Liquidator's nonexistent heart relaxed slightly when the mallard didn't bring up his family again. "Yes, your single-minded obsession with getting richer has always been useful. Which begs the question: why would you be championing a _sixth_ member? That'll cut into your profit margins, Licky."

Bushroot would be one unhappy customer when he found out that he and Negaduck had said nearly the same thing. With an easy shrug, Liquidator replied, "Because the potential for increasing our earnings increases exponentially with another super-powered member. I had Megavolt run the numbers," he threw in, even though he'd done nothing of the sort. But Negaduck was predictably corporate and would rather watch paint dry than consider the realities of a financial endeavor.

"And with our luck Darkwing Drooling Idiot will just recruit a sixth member of his _Justice Ducks_." Negaduck spat the name like it was profanity. Suddenly, he sat up. "Wait, that's it." He chuckled darkly to himself. "Oh, that's good. Why didn't I think of it before? Tell you what, Liquidator. You like making deals, so here's one. Lighter Hands didn't impress me with the range of her criminal experience."

"And as the powerful and respected leader of a criminal gang, that makes you nervous," Liquidator said. "You _do_ have an image to maintain."

Negaduck smiled smugly. Mean and ruthless, maybe, but just as susceptible to flattery as St. Canard's other caped clown. Liquidator allowed himself an internal eye-roll. Ego had been the downfall of many a mogul, corporate or criminal. "You know, sometimes I wonder how _you_ put up with the rest of those morons," Negaduck remarked. "You're the most with-it villain I've ever met—except myself, of course." He grinned more widely. "So here's my offer. I'm tired of Darkwing Duck destroying my depraved designs. If Charcoal Breath can kill that do-gooder, _then_ she can join." He chuckled. "And if she gets taken out while she's trying, then at least I don't have to think about her anymore."

Liquidator mulled that over. Negaduck's stipulations were minimal, which could only work to his, and his comrades', advantage. "I believe I can speak for my partners in crime by accepting your offer," Liquidator said.

Experience had taught Liquidator that if Negaduck looked pleased, things might shortly be heading into the red for the people around him. Except this time, he was sure, he had the upper hand, even if the duck thought he was going to come out on top. "Your pal Luminas has three days," Negaduck said. "After that, if Darkwing Duck is still alive and she's still in St. Canard, I'll _personally_ make sure that she finds a reason to leave."

"An offer, I'm sure, that she won't be able to refuse," Liquidator said drily.

He turned to go, starting to form himself into a puddle to slip back under the door, when Negaduck said, "Your family has a _lovely_ home, Liquidator. If I smell a rat, it won't stay that way."

Liquidator kept his expression neutral, nodded once, and slid under the door. On the other side, though, something made him stop, and he heard Negaduck chuckle evilly, "And when you fail, _Luminas_, just remember—_no one_ gets away with making me mad. _Or_ setting my hat on fire."


	5. Chapter 5

Author's note: Just wanted to thank those who've been reading! And thanks especially to my reviewers. I love hearing from you guys! Any suggestions/criticisms are of course welcome!

* * *

CHAPTER 5

Darkwing paced back and forth in front of Speedy Joe's Convenience Store, his cape fluttering behind him with each about-face that he made. Normally he wouldn't be out in the open like this, but it was two in the morning, and no one, not a single conniving criminal, had shown himself. Hours ago, when he'd still been hidden deep in the shadows, Launchpad had suggested that maybe this convenience store wasn't going to be the next one hit, but Darkwing had brushed the suggestion aside, trusting his own instincts. Now, as the night wore on, he was beginning to wonder if his infallible—well, maybe _mostly_ infallible—instincts hadn't let him down.

He stopped pacing and leaned dejectedly against the store's front window. "Maybe I scared him off?" Darkwing asked hopefully.

"Gee, I dunno, DW," Launchpad said. "I mean, he _does_ throw fire. Do you think he'd be afraid of you?"

Darkwing stared flatly at his sidekick. "The villains of this city are _afraid_ of my cunning intellect, which _always_ beats out brute force, for your information," he snapped.

"_I _know that," Launchpad said cheerfully, oblivious to Darkwing's tone. "But this guy's new in town, right? So _he_ doesn't!"

Raising a finger to argue, Darkwing processed Launchpad's words and then closed his mouth. "Oh," he said. "Well…yes. I guess you do have a point there."

With a grin, Launchpad said, "C'mon, DW, you know that _I_ know you're smarter than any super-villain."

Darkwing brushed off the front of his jacket. "Yep, yep yep yep yep, _no_ one outwits Darkwing Du—"

"Hi Dad!"

"Gah!" Darkwing jumped and whirled around, where he found himself looking down at his daughter. "Gosalyn!" he said. "What are you doing here? I thought I told you that I didn't want you around while I deal with this new villain!"

Gosalyn looked to her left and right exaggeratedly. "No offense, Dad, but you don't seem to be doing much except standing around." Indicating the very shadows where he'd been stalking the city's sinister scoundrels earlier, she added, "I've been hiding back there for an hour and you haven't done _anything_."

"That's all part of my plan," Darkwing replied, though with less luster than he might have three hours ago.

"Uh huh, sure," she said.

Gritting his teeth and trying not to lose his temper—it was not, after all, Gosalyn's fault that the night's stake-out had been a bust, though her attitude certainly wasn't improving his mood—Darkwing said tightly, "Why don't you go wait in the Ratcatcher."

"Aw, c'mon, then I won't be where the action is!"

"Yes, I know. That is exactly the _point_."

Innocently, Gosalyn pointed out, "You know, if this fire villain shows up and I'm in the Ratcatcher, he might hit it and then the whole thing would explode with me in it, so it's not like the Ratcatcher's _safe_. It's just boring."

He raised a finger and opened his mouth to argue with her, but at that moment, someone turned the nearest corner and began walking towards them. This would have been cause for interest, if not outright concern, regardless of who it was, but _this_ particular pedestrian was trouble on every wavelength.

Darkwing pushed Gosalyn behind him, hoping she'd run but knowing she probably wouldn't, and resolving to try to deal with that stubborn streak for about the thousandth time, and then demanded, "What are _you_ doing here, you electrified evildoer?"

Megavolt stopped in front of him and glanced around, looking mildly surprised to see him there. "Wow, guess I missed an opportunity to do one of those big entrances like you do, huh? You usually don't get here first."

Pulling out his gas gun and pointing it at the rat, Darkwing said, "Answer the question, _Sparky_."

Megavolt pulled his electro-blaster out, aimed it at Darkwing's face, and snarled, "What's it to you, _Dimwing_?"

The two of them stood that way for a moment, stalemated, until finally Darkwing held up a hand conciliatorily. He did not, of course, move the muzzle of his gun. "You know I have to ask you that." Something about the way Megavolt had ambled up belied any truly treacherous intentions. He hadn't cackled once, and he certainly wasn't monologuing.

"Yeah, I guess." Megavolt shrugged. "If you must know, Dipwing, I'm looking for…someone."

"Oh?" Darkwing asked. "That fiery fiend who foolishly tried to fry me at the power plant the other night, perhaps?"

Megavolt looked shocked. "How did you—uh, that is, what makes you say that?" he asked, trying, and failing, to finish his off-guard exclamation casually.

"Ha," Darkwing said. "What makes me say that is the fact that _I_, through my superior sleuthing and canny comprehension, was able to follow the nearly undetectable clues that the two of you left. The dark duck's detection skills _cannot_ be deterred—" When Megavolt yawned, Darkwing glared and decided to cut to the chase. "So where is he, Megsters? I know the two of you are working together, and I want to know what your plan is for all the Gander-ade."

Waving a hand, Megavolt said, "I don't know anything about that."

"But you're in cahoots!"

Loftily, Megavolt replied, "For your information, I've never worked with that new super-villain in my life." Giving Darkwing a sly look, he added, "So much for your deductive skills."

Suddenly, Gosalyn popped up from behind Darkwing. "Oh, come _on_, Megavolt, you expect us to believe that story? You're a lousy liar!"

He regarded her uninterestedly, then looked back to Darkwing. "So is it a crime to walk around at night now? Are you going to arrest me for taking a little evening stroll?"

Not for the first time, Darkwing wished that loitering was illegal in St. Canard. "No," he finally said, so reluctantly that it was an actual struggle to get the word out. Megavolt smiled smugly, and Darkwing said, "But the _minute_ you do something even slightly crooked, you'll regret it, buster!"

Gosalyn glared up at him. "_Darkwing_," she said, "are you really just going to let a dangerous criminal like _Megavolt_ stand there and wait for some more of his nasty pals to show up?"

Megavolt's eyes fell on her again. "Isn't it past your bedtime, little girl?" he asked unpleasantly.

Darkwing clamped a hand around Gosalyn's bill before she could retort and gave Megavolt a threatening look. Then the two archenemies, plus Gosalyn and Launchpad, stood in silence, waiting. A plane flew by overhead, exhaust streaming out behind it, and a car alarm went off in the distance. There was a bang in the alley across the street and Darkwing whirled, gas gun ready, but a dog just trotted out, a Hamburger Hippo bag in its mouth, and he relaxed. Megavolt, meanwhile, had produced a light bulb from somewhere and was holding it up to his ear, nodding every so often.

"Talk about a loose socket," Darkwing mumbled.

Eventually, Launchpad cleared his throat. "Anybody hungry?" he asked. "I think I've got some potato chips in the Ratcatcher."

Megavolt perked up at that. "Sour cream and onion?"

"Uh, no, barbecue, I think," Launchpad said, scratching his chin thoughtfully.

The rat shrugged. "No thanks, then."

Later, Darkwing might need to have a word with his sidekick about appropriate discussions to have with super-villains. Offers to share snacks was definitely going on the 'Not Appropriate' list. He checked his watch. 2:30, and still no sign of anyone, except Megavolt, of course, who seemed content to listen to the imaginary voice from the light bulb and glance around every so often for the fiery villain.

Then, from somewhere behind him came clicking footsteps which halted abruptly. Darkwing saw recognition in Megavolt's eyes and he whirled around, crowing, "Ah ha! Now I have you, you conflagratory criminal—oh, not this _again_."

Because just as he whirled to face the villain, the evildoer burst into flame, completely masking his identity. This time, however, Darkwing had come prepared. Grimly, he slotted a canister of flame retardant into place in his gas gun, aimed, and fired it.

There was a buzzing behind him and a current of electricity discharged through the air, hitting the canister and making it explode well short of its target.

"Now, that wasn't very nice at all, Darkwing," Megavolt said as he turned to face the rat again. His hands were leaping with blue electricity and he bared his teeth in a grin. "Not very nice at all," he added, then loosed some of that electricity in Darkwing's direction.

Darkwing rolled out of the way, seeing Launchpad and Gosalyn break for cover out of the corner of his eye. The Fireball took that opportunity to run past him, taking up a position next to Megavolt. "Never worked together, huh, Sparky?" Darkwing demanded, righting himself into a kneel and pointing his gun at the two of them.

"Not till now!" Megavolt replied with a grin and a laugh. "_Shocked, _Darkwing?" With that, both of them began firing at him in earnest, and it was all the masked mallard could do to dodge, jump, twist, roll, and stumble out of the way. His cape was definitely going to need repair, there were half a dozen holes burned in it already.

He found his feet and readied himself for a Quack-Fu kick when suddenly, Gosalyn yelled, "Darkwing, look out!" and ran out from behind the Ratcatcher.

Despite the flames wreathing his entire body, it was clear that the Fireball had noticed Gosalyn for the first time and turned towards her.

"Gosalyn!" Darkwing shouted, seeing the way he was winding his arm back, a ball of fire burning in his palm.

She stopped, seeing the danger she was in, and turned to find cover again. But she didn't move fast enough and the villain swung his arm around. Darkwing put everything he had into throwing himself towards her and knocking her to the ground, just as the ball of flame sailed so close over his head that he felt the heat of its passing.

Megavolt cackled. "Gotta run, Darkwing, but it's always nice to see that you can't take the heat!"

Darkwing started to get to his feet, but the rat shot a bolt of electricity towards him, covering his and the Fireball's retreat, and before he could do anything, they were both gone. As he turned back around to frantically make sure that Gosalyn wasn't hurt, though, he found that he couldn't care too much.

She hadn't gotten up yet and was still staring wide-eyed in the direction that Megavolt and his friend had disappeared in, as Darkwing descended on her to check for burns, cuts, abrasions, puncture wounds, poisoning, infectious diseases…

"Hey! Dad, cut it out, I'm _fine_," she said indignantly.

This appeared to be the truth. Darkwing heaved a sigh and took off his hat, kneeling in front of her. "Gosalyn, please, stay home tomorrow night. You could have been killed and you know…"

Normally she got defensive and stubborn when he made this type of—completely reasonable—request, but this time she nodded, looking shaken. Biting her beak, she said, "Yeah, yeah, you wouldn't know how to live with yourself." Impulsively, she hugged him. "Okay, Dad. I promise."

He broke the embrace and checked her fingers to make sure she wasn't crossing them, then hugged her again. "Good." Standing up and taking her hand, he said, "I think it's time to head home tonight, too."

"But they'll get away!" Gosalyn said, and then, when he gave her a stern look, she added, "So…I guess you'll have to get them next time."

Launchpad handed her helmet to her and then looked at Darkwing, saying in a remarkably serious tone for him, "You were right, DW. Megavolt and that flame-throwing guy are definitely working together."

Darkwing stared in the direction that the two of them had disappeared in. "I know," he said, and then, under his breath, added in a mutter, "And I wish I wasn't."

* * *

The two of them ran for blocks before Megavolt deemed that it was safe enough to slow to a walk, which made Luminas crash into him from behind, and which prompted him to turn around and snarl, "Hey, watch where you're going!"

She swatted her bangs out of her face and glared at him, unfazed by his tone. "Don't _stop_ right in front of me, then!"

"Well, sor-_ry_," he said. "I didn't realize your super-power also gives you temporary _blindness_."

She narrowed her eyes and for a second he considered that if she chose to, she could shoot a fireball at him from close range, and the sensation of melting rubber fusing to his burning skin was sure to be unpleasant. But instead of lashing out, she just made an exasperated noise and started walking again. "I don't have time for this." When he didn't say anything, and didn't move, either, she turned around and asked, "Are you coming?"

"Oh—uh, sure," he stuttered, startled by her mood's abrupt change. Talk about mercurial. "Where are we going?"

"Guess you'll see," she said cryptically. As he caught up with her, she turned to him and asked curiously, all traces of her anger gone, "Who was the girl?"

"Girl?" Megavolt asked.

She raised an eyebrow at him. "Yeah, the girl. The red-head that was back there with Darkwing. Who is she?"

Scratching his head, he asked, "Was there a girl there?"

Giving him an incredulous look, she asked, "Do you seriously not remember? She was right there the whole time! Darkwing saving her was the reason we got away!"

"Uh…" Megavolt wracked his brain. Red-head, red-head, it sounded kind of familiar, but— "Oh!" he exclaimed. "Right, that kid! Uh, I don't know, she's a big fan or something. She's always hanging around."

"A big fan?" Luminas said doubtfully.

"I know, go figure, right? Dorkwing's the last person in the city who should have a fan club following him around."

Luminas stopped abruptly in the darkness between two streetlights, which, he couldn't help noting with approval, was Super-villain 101. Never place yourself in the light. Though once you were an established and powerful super-villain, who was of course feared and respected by everyone in the city, that rule could be bent a little.

"So what were _you_ doing there, Megavolt?" she asked.

Turning back around to face her, he admitted, "Looking for you, actually."

She put her hands on her hips. "How could you possibly have known I'd hit that store next?"

"Hey, you're not asking why _Darkwing_ knew you'd be there!"

"Darkwing isn't here. You are."

He gave her a disgruntled look. "It was easy. I just looked at the stores you'd already hit, plotted them out on a map, and then noticed there'd been a mathematical pattern to your Gander-ade robberies. So I extrapolated it out into the future and got that store back there as my answer."

Luminas stared at him. "I thought my robberies were totally random. I was purposefully _trying_ to be random."

"There's still logic in randomness," Megavolt said, his tone making it clear, he hoped, how obvious this fact was, and how little he respected her for not realizing it.

Shaking her head a little, she said, "And you think light bulbs talk to you."

Either she hadn't picked up on the contempt…or she had, and she didn't care, and he'd impressed her, and now she was implying he was crazy… Geez, if he'd read that right, he'd impressed _himself_. "Light bulbs _do _talk to me," he informed her. "That's why they've chosen _me_ to be their liberator and savior!"

She continued staring at him as though she wasn't sure whether or not he was serious, and then she smiled hesitantly. "Do you really believe that?"

Megavolt put his hands on his hips. "What do you mean, believe? It's the truth, belief doesn't have anything to do with it. Just because you can't hear them doesn't make it not _true_."

She looked at him, then looked up and around herself, at the streetlights and lit windows, as though she'd never considered that they all had lives of their own. Well, of course she hadn't. No one did. That was why it was up to him. "What are they saying now?" she asked after a moment.

He opened his mouth to answer, then stopped and tilted his head at her. No one had ever asked him that question before, and for a minute or two he wasn't sure what to say, or whether she cared—_really_ cared—or was just mocking him. They mocked him in jail, back before St. Canard had built its fancy new super-villain prison, when he had to deal with cells full of cretinous idiots who understood neither his genius nor his crusade. But she looked sincere.

"They're saying a lot of different things," he finally replied. Pointing upwards, to the light closest to them, he went on, "That one doesn't like this neighborhood. Not safe, and he's right. This one over here—" He twisted his torso around and indicated an exterior light on a building, "—is afraid of what's going to happen when she burns out. That kitchen light in there wants to know why the tenants in his apartment always leave him on when they go out." Megavolt shrugged. "They're like people. They're not all the same."

There was an odd and guarded look in her eyes, and if he'd read her correctly before, he was at a loss to now. Frankly, that was a state he preferred being in. He didn't particularly care for empathy and understanding and knowing what others were thinking. That kind of stuff was for the good guys. Eventually, she said, "You're not really the way I expected you to be."

With another shrug, he said, "Yeah, I get that a lot." Jerking his head, he said, "C'mon, we should keep going, just in case Dimwing decides to chase us."

"No, but—" She held out a hand to stop him. "I mean, you really care about that these electrical things, don't you? Light bulbs and appliances and all of that. You said they're like people."

"Well, sure I care about them," Megavolt said, "No one else listens. I'm their only friend."

She looked around again at the dark street, though maybe, possibly, she was beginning to see it the way he did—not dark, but shining with brilliant little points of light. "That must be…nice. To be surrounded by so many…" She hesitated, but then finished, "…people who need you."

Surprised, Megavolt blinked at her. "I…guess," he said, not wanting to admit that she'd actually hit a nerve with the comment. Clearing his throat, he said, "Seriously, we should go."

With a brisk nod, she started off again. It was only a few more minutes before she turned down an alley, cutting back to an empty parking lot, where she quickly approached a dented metal door in the side of a warehouse.

"What's this?" Megavolt asked.

She glanced over her shoulder as she shook the knob, then forced the door open. "My hideout."

Looking around the parking lot, he asked, a hint of distaste in his tone, "Really?"

"_Temporary_ hideout," she amended. "I'm still looking around for something more permanent." As she stepped inside and flipped on the light, she added, "I'm pretty sure there are roaches in here, so watch your step."

Megavolt abruptly stopped walking and peered intently at the ground before taking a ginger step inside, relieved when he didn't hear any crunching under his boot. Then he lifted his head and noticed what was in front of him. "Whoa," he said, looking up—and up, and up, and up. Cases of Gander-ade were stacked all the way to the ceiling in a pyramid, and she was currently climbing it and shoving another case onto the top, which she then ripped open and pulled a bottle out of. "You really _do_ drink a lot of this stuff, don't you?" Megavolt said, awed at the sheer…sheer…_amount_ of the stuff. _How_ long had she been in St. Canard? He hadn't given her enough credit. She might have been a disaster, but she was definitely efficient.

Climbing down with the bottle gripped in her hand, Luminas replied, "This should last me for awhile."

Megavolt raised an eyebrow at her. "You know, I think Liquidator used to run some sort of water company or something. Maybe you should ask him for some of his old stock."

"Yeah right," she scoffed, and then, mimicking him, said, "A lifetime supply could be available to _you_, for the low price of every penny you steal for the rest of your life! No thanks," she added, slipping back into her normal voice. "I'll stick with stealing the Gander-ade." She twisted the cap off and drank the whole thing in one gulp, apparently without breathing, and then wiped her mouth with the back of her gloved hand. "You still haven't said why you were looking for me."

"Oh, that. Yeah." He scratched his head. "Look, are you still up for joining the Fearsome Five?"

Looking shocked, she said, "What? I mean, yes. But Negaduck—"

With a wave of his hand, he said, "We talked to Negaduck." And Liquidator hadn't been happy when he'd come back from that talk, even Megavolt could see that. There was an angry gleam in his eyes, and Bushroot had started to ask what was wrong, but an uncharacteristic glare from the dog had cut him off mid-sentence.

"And he agreed?" she asked eagerly.

"Weeeell," he said, and her face fell. "We sort of volunteered you to kill Darkwing Duck. If you do that, you're in."

Except, of course, she wasn't. That was, there was no way she'd be able to kill Darkwing. Negaduck just wanted her arrested or killed. Megavolt had considered telling her this. He'd decided not to, and he didn't remember why. But sometimes just remembering the decision was enough.

She brightened, but then her expression subsided into puzzlement. "But I don't even know Darkwing Duck. Tonight was the first time I've ever fought him."

Rolling his eyes, he said, "I'm pretty sure Negaduck doesn't care if you're on a first name basis with him or not." There was a thoughtful look on her face, like she was considering whether or not to accept the offer. "Look, take it or leave it, but you're not going to get another chance. If you want to join the Fearsome Five, you have to fry Dimwing. Unless, of course," he added, smiling smugly, "you're chicken."

Luminas balled her hands into fists at her sides. "I am _not _chicken. I'm just thinking."

"What's to think about?" he asked dismissively.

Narrowing her eyes at him, she said, "What the four of you are getting out of this, for one."

Taken by surprise, Megavolt hemmed and hawed for a moment before asking, "What…what makes you say that?"

"Because villains don't do things out of the goodness of their hearts for people they don't know. _I _wouldn't."

He stared at her, rapidly trying to think of something that wasn't quite a lie, but wasn't quite the truth either. "We just figured it wouldn't be a bad idea to have someone with powers like yours on our side, instead of someone else's," he finally came up with. True enough.

It seemed to mollify her, at least, and after another moment, she shrugged and said, "Okay, sure. I can kill Darkwing Duck. I suppose it works out better that I _haven't_ fought with him, really. Then I might feel like we have kind of a relationship, and that might makes things weird."

This had gone remarkably smoothly, if one didn't count the run-in with Darkwing. Though then again, what was a night in St. Canard _without_ a run-in with Darkwing? Come to think of it, it might be odd without him around to annoy everybody…

Megavolt shrugged to himself, then said to Luminas, "Okay, well, let us know when you do him in. I'm gonna get going now."

As he started for the door, she took a step forward and said, "Wait!" When he turned around, his brow furrowed in confusion at the command, she stammered, "I mean, you don't have to go."

Giving her a far more patient look than she deserved, he said, "I know I don't _have_ to go. But when it comes to a choice between hanging out at the roach motel here and going home and getting some work done, well, let's just say I don't really have to deliberate about that one too long."

He turned around again, but once more her voice stopped him. "Maybe I could…come with you?"

This was getting irritating, and all this spinning back and forth was making him dizzy. "Maybe an asteroid will hit the Earth in five minutes and obliterate all life on the planet," he said patronizingly, and then added with a sneer, "Except the roaches in this building, of course."

"I get it, you don't like roaches," she said with a scowl.

"And you do?!"

"No! Ooh, that's not the point!" she said frustratedly.

He turned around _again_, determined this time that he was going to get out of there. "Sorry, Luminas, you know how it is, though—inventions to build, banks to rob, manuals to read—"

Suddenly she was in front of him, which at least saved him the trouble of turning around. "I could help."

"I don't need anyone to read to me, thanks."

"No, I mean with the other stuff." It was obvious, even to him, that she was futilely trying to salvage the shreds that remained of her dignity, but he just stared at her flatly, so she tried, "C'mon, we had our first real caper tonight! We made a pretty good team!"

He shook his head. "That wasn't a caper. That was some banter and a getaway—well-executed, I'll give you that—from Darkwing Duck." Trying to move past her, he said, "I'll see you around."

Her ears drooped. "Okay, fine. I get the point."

"Really? Because I was beginning to wonder if it was sharp enough."

At last, he found himself outside, and he looked around for the nearest utility pole. Power lines would be the fastest way back to the lighthouse tonight. Or was he sleeping at his apartment? He glanced around, trying to determine which was closer, but couldn't tell much from the lot. Sort of creepy back here, really, with all these buildings looming up around it, and no light of any kind reaching back there.

"The thing is," Luminas said from behind him, and he smacked his hand to his forehead, "I don't really know anyone in St. Canard."

"If you don't watch it you're not going to know _me_, either," he snapped.

"I'll be really quiet. I just…" She sighed. "I just really, _really_ don't want to spend another night here by myself with the roaches."

"I thought you liked them."

"No, I don't like them! They're gross! I haven't taken my boots off in a week because I'm afraid they're going to crawl inside!"

Her persistence was reminding him forcibly of Quackerjack, who he _also_ had trouble saying 'no' to. Wait, also? So his mind had gone and made itself up, apparently, without him knowing about it. "Okay, okay," he grumbled, half-hoping she wouldn't hear him, but no such luck. He told himself it was because she'd played the roach card. Villain or no, he wasn't evil enough to leave someone to the mercy of those things.

Without a moment's hesitation, she was at his side, giving him a crooked smile. "Thanks," she said. "You won't regret it. _Too _much." When he glared, the smile deepened and her nose crinkled a little, and then she asked, "I can give you a ride if you need one."

"Oh, don't you mean _us_?" he snapped, and she shrugged. With an irritated huff, he added, "Since you'd just slow me down while I waited for you, sure. You can give me a ride."

She flashed that crooked smile at him again and darted back inside. During the time she was gone, he considered just taking off, but he still hadn't figured out which hideout he wanted to go to, and so he was still standing there when she wheeled out a bright orange moped from the warehouse.

Hopping on and patting what remained of the seat behind her, she said, "Where to?"

"Um," he said doubtfully, eyeing the moped, "I don't think that's a passenger vehicle."

"Sure it is," she said dismissively. "You're so scrawny, you'll fit."

"Excuse me? _Scrawny_?"

She started the bike and then kicked off, giving herself the momentum to zoom towards him. She circled him once and then stopped, the motor idling in a rapid chug and one of her eyebrows arched. "Well?" she asked.

There was something in the arch of that eyebrow that made him think that she might, just possibly, be almost half the super-villain she thought she was. Or wanted to be.

Still hedging, he asked, "Do you know your way around a toolbox?"

"Sure do, Sparky."

He poked a finger at her nose. "You don't get to call me that. We are _not_ on infuriating nickname basis yet."

There was definitely something kind of infectious about her when she was happy, though he felt bad for her that him saving her from the roaches could _make_ her this happy. Poor kid, and all he was going to do was repair broken appliances.

"Yet," she said, and he resigned himself to a continuing partnership—for the moment at least—by squeezing onto the back of the bike. She took off without warning, forcing him to throw his arms around her waist and hang on for dear life and maybe, just for the tiniest of seconds, shut his eyes in pure terror as she careened through St. Canard's dark streets. But there was, he supposed, one bright side to dying at the hands of a psychotic moped driver—at the speed she was going, it couldn't be anything but quick and painless.

* * *

For once, Gosalyn didn't argue when Darkwing tucked her into bed. She yawned, gave him a hug, and allowed him to smooth her hair back from her forehead and kiss her. When he dragged himself back downstairs, hat dangling from his hand and more tired than he thought he had any right to be, he sank into a chair at the kitchen table and sighed. Launchpad was still up, eating a late night, or rather early morning, bowl of cereal and paging through an aviation catalogue. At Darkwing's sigh, he looked up.

"Here—made a bowl of cereal for you," he said, pushing the extra bowl that Darkwing hadn't noticed across the table.

He was about to refuse it on the grounds that it was almost four in the morning, but then he looked at those cheerful little loops of corn and wheat, floating happily in milk, and picked up the spoon. "Thanks, Launchpad," he said, meaning it. Somehow his sidekick had poured the milk at exactly the right time, so that the Quackios were exactly the right consistency.

"Something eating you, DW?" Launchpad asked.

Darkwing swallowed a mouthful of Quackios. 'Perceptive' wasn't a word he applied to Launchpad very often, and yet, on occasion… Pushing cereal around in the bowl, he said, "Gosalyn could have been seriously hurt tonight. Or even killed."

"Yeah, but things turned out all right in the end," Launchpad said sanguinely.

With a shake of his head, Darkwing said, "Sure, this time they did." He leaned back in his chair, feeling wearier than he had in a long time. "I don't know, Launchpad. Every time something like this happens I think I shouldn't let her come along anymore, but when it comes down to it, I just can't get around to really making her listen to me."

In what he clearly thought was a reassuring tone, Launchpad said, "Hey, I've told you before that my dad took me flying with him all the time. Sure it was dangerous, and sure I could've been hurt, but I wouldn't've listened to him if he'd told me to stay on the ground."

"But Launchpad, what kind of father am I that I let my daughter come along while I'm fighting dangerous criminals? These people would use her against me in a _second_ if they had any idea who she really was…"

Launchpad's brow furrowed. "You're a great dad, DW. And Gosalyn's safer with you than anywhere else. You know that!"

Darkwing sighed again and slowly untied his mask, taking it off and holding it in his hands. "I wish I did, Launchpad," he said, staring at it. "I really wish I did."


	6. Chapter 6

CHAPTER 6

Luminas actually _did_ know her way around a toolbox. Megavolt hadn't even had to explain what most of the wrenches looked like, though the spark plug wrench threw her. It sort-of-kind-of impressed him, though he'd never tell her that in a million years. The only person who was remotely as handy as him was Quackerjack, and though Luminas didn't really come close to the duck's acumen, she wasn't totally hopeless.

"So what are you building?" she asked him, leaning over and handing him the number one Phillips screwdriver he'd just asked for.

Taking the screwdriver without looking at her, he said, "Gamma radiation collector."

"And…what does that do?"

"Well, what does it sound like? It collects gamma radiation!"

He carefully notched a screw into place and inserted the screwdriver into the screw head, only to hear Luminas ask, "Why do you want to collect gamma radiation?"

Twisting his head to look at her, he snapped, "You said you were going to be _quiet_."

"Thought you might've forgotten that," she murmured.

"I heard that."

That made her stop talking. For roughly forty-five seconds. "Is it a weapon?"

"No," he snapped, and then, more politely, asked, "Can you hand me that Allen wrench that I threw in the corner earlier in that fit of rage?"

She straightened up to look for the wrench, then went to retrieve it, on the way apparently making a detour to the kitchen for a glass of water, because she came back with both. "I was just thinking," she said casually, "if it was a weapon, maybe I could use it to kill Darkwing."

Turning around to face her, he said, "My struggles to defeat Darkwing Duck may be noble and worthy, but this, _this_, is something else entirely! This will finally make the world recognize my genius. _This_ will make the world respect me! Or, well," he added in a more thoughtful voice, crooking his finger at his chin, "St. Canard, at least."

Luminas raised her eyebrows. "If you want respect you might want to think about losing the battery." After taking a sip of water, she added, "Just saying."

Megavolt snatched the Allen wrench away from her and regarded her for a moment, slapping it against his palm. Then, pointing it at her threateningly, he said, "Do you want to go back to the roaches?"

Her eyes widened and she put a hand to her chest. "Personally, _I_ like the battery. It really…uh…frames your face."

He kept staring at her, his eyes narrowed. It would do her good to have some terror struck into her by him. After all, he could fry her easy, any time he wanted to, and he didn't think she appreciated that fact. Actually, come to think of it, all he was probably doing was impressing upon her the fact that he could hit her with a wrench, which any old idiot could do and which she, frankly, and small as she was—shorter than him, even, and he wasn't winning any height contests—could probably fend off.

So without a word, he turned back to the gamma radiation collector, brandishing the wrench. Then another interruption presented itself in the form of the lighthouse door opening and slamming shut. Megavolt glanced, not without substantial irritation, at the feed from his security cameras in the stairwell.

He supposed he should have expected by this time that Quackerjack would never, ever knock, so there was nothing unusual about that. What _was_ unusual was the careful way he tiptoed up the spiral stairs, not totally quietly, of course, as Quackerjack couldn't be quiet to save his life.

His bill and the top of his hat became visible first as he peaked over the floor into the room, and when his eyes fell on Megavolt and Luminas staring at him, he exclaimed, "Oh, phooey!" and jumped up the last several steps in no more than one or two leaps. "I didn't think you were around," he said with a pout. "I had _such_ a good surprise in mind…"

"I bet," Megavolt said, rolling his eyes. He was unfortunately well-acquainted with Quackerjack's idea of a 'good' surprise. Resigning himself to the fact that he wasn't getting any work done tonight, he shrugged, "It was easier to find her than I thought it was going to be."

Quackerjack eyed Luminas beadily and she stared back at him, her arms folded over her chest. Apparently she hadn't forgiven him for the water gun incident yet. "I didn't realize it was going to be a _social_ outing," Quackerjack said pointedly.

The truth was that Megavolt hadn't planned on it being one either, but he hated it when Quackerjack got clingy and possessive, and he wasn't going to give the duck the satisfaction of saying it wasn't. "What do you want?" he snapped in lieu of confirming or denying that what was going on here was 'social' in any way, instead of a chore.

For a minute, it looked like Quackerjack might stomp off without saying why he'd come, but then, crossly, he said, "Liquidator wants to meet."

"About what?"

"Stuff."

"Stuff," Megavolt repeated. "Like…Fearsome Four stuff?"

Quackerjack shrugged, but when Megavolt gave him an exasperated look, he said, "What do you _think_ he wants to talk about? The four of us joining the Lace and Doily Society? Of _course_ Fearsome Four stuff!" He scowled. "And you might as well bring _her_, too," he added, jabbing a thumb in Luminas's direction.

She pursed her lips at his tone and appeared to be struggling not to say anything. In the end, she kept whatever it was to herself and followed Megavolt as he reluctantly headed towards the stairs. Quackerjack, upon closer inspection, was still looking sort of worse for wear after his unfortunate pogo stick and freeway underpass accident, and while Megavolt wouldn't have ascribed the word 'guilt' to the emotion that flickered through him, it did make him ask, "Need a ride, Quacky?"

"No," Quackerjack said, then added with a delighted smile, "But you can give me one!"

The three of them made their exit from the lighthouse, Quackerjack describing in vivid detail what he planned to do if another Whiffle Boy game was ever released. As they clambered into Megavolt's car, Luminas said from the backseat, "There _is_ another game coming out. It's being released next month."

Quackerjack's eyes widened and Megavolt shook his head in exasperation as the duck asked, rage simmering under his deceptively calm tone, "What?"

"Yeah," Luminas said, blissfully unaware of Quackerjack's Whiffle psychosis, "there's going to be this huge release-night shindig at the Plaza Hotel downtown. It's a big deal, first game on the new platform—"

"Oh, it'll be a big deal, all right," Quackerjack interrupted her, his smile widening manically. "I'll make sure of that."

In the rearview mirror, Megavolt saw Luminas's brow furrow, and he made a note to remind her that if she played Whiffle Boy, she'd better keep it a secret from Quacky. No amount of villainous camaraderie—not that the two of them seemed to have any, anyway—could overcome that betrayal. "So," he interjected into their conversation, "where are we supposed to be going, Quackerjack?"

"Oh, Liquidator's hideout," the duck said nonchalantly.

"Which one?"

With a grin, Quackerjack said, "Your favorite one."

Megavolt groaned and Luminas asked, "What? Am I missing something here?"

"Everything," Quackerjack muttered childishly, but as Megavolt started the car and tore out of his parking spot, the rat said, "Liquidator has this really unfortunate predilection for hanging out in the sewers."

Her eyebrows shot up. "Excuse me?"

Studying his fingernails, Quackerjack said with the utmost casualness, "Feel free to get out of the car anytime."

She glared at the back of his head and Quackerjack just smiled smugly. Several minutes of the drive passed in silence, until Megavolt, looking dubiously around the street he was on, asked, "Um, Quacky? _Where_ is Liquidator's hideout again?"

"Third street on the left, then take a right at the broken hydrant," Quackerjack said in a business-like tone. "It's the manhole cover with that wave logo on it."

Said manhole cover was slightly ajar, and Quackerjack pulled it aside, then climbed in and slid down the ladder into the darkness. Luminas grimaced but followed him, and Megavolt took up the rear, pulling the cover loosely into place behind him before climbing down the ladder into the pitch blackness of the sewer.

At least he couldn't hear running water, though there _was_ something dripping nearby. "Anybody think to bring a flashlight?" he asked. When he only got silence in response, he said waspishly, "Guess I have to do _everything_."

He pulled a flashlight out and flipped the switch on. When it did nothing, he fumbled for the batteries and zapped them. "Let there be light!" he said dramatically, and this time the flashlight switched on. Quackerjack was looming over Luminas, face twisted into a ghoulish scowl and his arms reaching threateningly towards her, and she whirled and glared at him.

"Funny," she snapped, though she looked like she might have been just a little startled.

Megavolt smirked and shined the flashlight down the sewer tunnel. This must have been one of the storm sewers because the channel was dry, but there _was_ still that disconcerting dripping. He hoped it didn't turn into fully fledged pouring.

As the three of them started off, Quackerjack remarked, "We could have seen by _torchlight, _Luminas."

Her fingers twitched like she was itching to show him a little torchlight personally. "Give me a break. If I'm supposed to kill Darkwing, I have to save up some energy."

"Yeah, Sparky's superpower runs out, too," Quackerjack said mockingly. "Too bad you guys can't be like Bushroot and Liquidator."

"Or _you_," Megavolt said. "_Your _superpower doesn't run out, does it? Oh wait—you don't have one."

Quackerjack laughed sarcastically. "Hey, maybe I won't tell you how to get to Licky's hideout and you can wander around down here forever."

"How fast do you think you'd starve to death, Seth?" Mr. Banana Brain asked.

Despite his threats, Quackerjack directed Megavolt down the correct tunnels, and eventually a faint glow became visible up ahead. Megavolt kept the flashlight on to avoid puddles, which, as they'd approached their destination, had become more and more prevalent. He'd stepped in one but his boots had been enough protection, and the water hadn't splashed high enough. But he wasn't taking any chances, and he kept the flashlight pointed at the ground for the rest of the walk.

"Hallooooo," Quackerjack called once they were closer, his voice echoing off the brick walls.

The metal door ahead cracked open slightly, a tendril of water holding it there, and as the three of them reached it, the door was flung open wide by Liquidator, who said, "Welcome to one of my many humble abodes!"

"Are they all in the sewers?" Megavolt grumbled.

"No, and they also aren't all fit for company," Liquidator replied. "Your invitation to this one was a special offer, subject to revocation at any time." Peering around Megavolt, he said, "Ah, good, you brought our probationary member."

They filed in. If Liquidator's other hideouts weren't fit for company, they couldn't have been much more than dank pits in the ground. This one was, at least, lit, with haphazard wiring that Megavolt had done himself for Liquidator, siphoning the power off the nearest transformer. Whatever the room had once been, it hadn't been used in a long time. The brick was crumbling in places, leaving holes with nothing but blackness behind them, which was creepy to Megavolt in a way that it wouldn't have been if he'd been above ground. It was small, too, only about eight feet on a side, making it feel entirely too much like a jail cell. There was, of course, no natural light, and the only concession that Liquidator had made to the fact that people besides mutant water dogs might come into the place were a couple overturned crates for seating.

Bushroot was currently occupying one, looking as though he was trying not to appear miserable about being in the sewers. Frankly, Megavolt didn't know why he bothered, except maybe out of some kind of loyalty to Liquidator. Bushroot was like that. It went without saying that Megavolt would never pretend not to hate one of his comrades' hideouts. The only one he _didn't_ hate, actually, was Bushroot's, but there was nothing particularly enticing about it, either.

Which was…not important, he supposed. Taking a seat on one of the crates, he asked, "So what's this about? I have extremely important work that I need to get back to."

Quackerjack snickered but refrained from commenting as he landed on a neighboring crate. Luminas stayed on her feet, and as Liquidator closed the door with an echoing bang, he said, "I wouldn't be a gentleman if I didn't insist that the one lady among us sit before we begin."

She crossed her arms over her chest. "You can cut it out with the whole 'I'm-a-girl' thing. I get it, you guys don't respect that fact that a woman could be a villain—"

Loud laughter interrupted her as Quackerjack nearly toppled backwards off his crate. Breathlessly, he managed to get out, "Oh, that's—that's a good one!"

The glare that Megavolt had become accustomed to had been wiped right off her face by Quackerjack's reaction, and since the jester was struggling to speak, he elaborated for him, "Have you ever _seen_ St. Canard's female villains in action?"

"Surveys say no," Liquidator answered for her.

Crossing one of his legs over the other and leaning an arm on his knee, Megavolt said to her, "One thing you kind of learn as a super-villain is to _not_ underestimate your fellow villains."

"We don't discriminate based on age, race, sex, or creed," Liquidator added.

Looking offended, Bushroot said to her, "Yeah, you know, just because we're villains doesn't mean we have to be chauvinists, too."

She held up her hands. "I stand corrected."

Finally regaining what little composure he had, Quackerjack said, "So stop _standing _at all then and sit down! You're making all of us nervous."

She took a seat on the only remaining crate without further argument, next to Bushroot, and focused her attention on Liquidator, who glided to the center of the tiny room. "A discussion about the terms of the agreement between you and Negaduck seemed to me to be in order," the canine said, looking at Luminas.

"I thought the terms were just that I kill Darkwing Duck."

Glancing towards Megavolt, Liquidator said, "Ah, yes, I thought my electrified associate might neglect to mention a few clauses of the contract."

"Stuff came up," Megavolt grumbled.

Liquidator raised an eyebrow and continued smoothly, "Be that as it may, this happens to be need-to-know information for all relevant parties." Looking straight at Luminas again with his hollow eyes, he said, "First, you have three days." Then, he exaggeratedly checked his wrist, where a watched formed out of water. "Better make that two and a half. The clock _is_ ticking on this limited-time offer. Second, Negaduck will require proof of purchase regarding Darkwing's demise."

"You're right," Luminas said, staring at Megavolt, which he pretended not to notice. "Megavolt _did_ neglect to mention those things. Especially the first one."

"And finally," Liquidator said, "an addendum to the original items by Negaduck's subordinates." The slight twist of vitriol to this final word was barely detectable. "The four of us have arranged a little trial run for you this evening, just to see what your particular skillset brings to our organization."

"Excuse me?" she asked. "You're _testing_ me?"

Holding up a finger, Liquidator said, "This prudent businessman, not to mention his associates, stuck his neck out for you. We want to see that you can deliver the goods before we invest further in your stock."

"I didn't _need_ you to stick your neck out for me," Luminas said heatedly. "I fight my own battles."

"Yes," Liquidator said. "That was…obvious."

Bushroot intervened at that moment. "Look, Negaduck was just plain mean about it, but a new member in the Fearsome Five is a big deal. We've all worked together for awhile, and we just want to know if you're going to fit in with us, or, you know, be a thorn in our sides."

For a moment, she regarded him, and then she pointed out, "But you already 'stuck your necks out for me', so why this whole song and dance now?"

Twirling a tassel of his hat around a finger, Quackerjack said, "Just because we decided we'd play with you doesn't mean we have to be _permanent_ playmates."

There was a heavy silence in the room. Megavolt could still hear the dripping and decided to just accept it. Otherwise he'd probably have an ulcer by the time he got out of there. When Luminas stayed silent, he said impatiently, "You wanted to do crimes with us, right? Well here's your big chance, and you're not even a member! I call that your lucky day."

She pursed her lips and still didn't say anything. Then, finally, she replied in a low voice, "I don't like that you guys think I need to prove something." All four of them opened their mouths to object, and she held up a hand. "But I get it. I guess I probably look pretty stupid to all of you."

"No," Bushroot rushed to reassure her.

"Aw, we shouldn't lie to her," Quackerjack said.

Bushroot glared at the jester, then turned back to Luminas. "It's nothing personal. Certain plants can all share a pot, but if you introduce the wrong one, it can throw the whole thing off."

"Oh great, so you think I'm a weed or something?" she demanded.

"Hm, that might not have been the best metaphor…" Bushroot said.

Folding her legs up underneath her on the crate, Luminas said, "You guys really believe all of this 'it's not personal' stuff, don't you?"

There was another silence, and then Megavolt, after considering the question, said, "Well, it sort of depends on the situation."

She rolled her eyes but just said, "So what and where is this test that you guys are putting me through?"

Liquidator's mouth curved into a grin. "We appreciate your patience during this transitionary period. As for the target, it's one of our favorite easy steals: the St. Canard Building and Loan."

* * *

The four of them had hit the St. Canard Building and Loan, separately and together, at least a dozen times in the past year. It was such an easy place to rob that it had become kind of a joke between them, something to do when one was bored, just to see if the place had upped their security yet. So far they hadn't wised up, or maybe they had, figured the Fearsome Four—er, Five—would break in anyway, and decided not to waste the money installing any kind of fancy security system.

In any case, it was a unanimous and unspoken decision, at least among Megavolt, Bushroot, Quackerjack, and Liquidator, that Luminas be the one to break in. If she couldn't manage that, Megavolt informed her matter-of-factly, their partnership was definitely at an end.

She gave him a flat look, put her palm against the locks on the door one by one, and melted them. Then she kicked the door in.

"How am I doing so far?" she asked solicitously, arching her eyebrow at the four of them before ducking inside.

"Anybody can kick down a door," Quackerjack glowered.

"Not in stilettos," came her response, floating out from the darkness.

With a snicker, Bushroot said, "I'm kind of surprised Megavolt hasn't ended up wearing them at some point."

"Hey," Megavolt snapped, "we're still not talking about me and the dress."

"You say that like it was only one," Quackerjack said.

"We're _especially_ not talking about _that_!"

"Oh," Quackerjack asked innocently, "was it a banned subject?"

At that moment, Luminas stuck her head back out the door. "Hey, are you guys coming or do I have to do this whole robbery myself?"

"That's the kind of go-getter attitude that gets you ahead in the world of commerce," Liquidator said, slipping into the building. The rest of them followed, Megavolt shutting the door behind them.

Inside, Luminas had already jumped the counter and had her ear to the combination lock on the safe while she turned it slowly. Megavolt gave the others a triumphant look, realizing, with a sinking feeling as he did so, that his reputation, at least for the foreseeable future, had become tied to how this whole Luminas thing turned out. That, he thought with a twinge of annoyance, threw a whole new wrinkle into things. _That_ meant that like it or not, he was invested in her, and making sure that she pulled this off. Maybe, he mused, if she actually got killed trying to take down Darkwing, he wouldn't take too big of a hit…nah. If she managed to get killed he'd never hear the end of it. Darkwing usually didn't kill people. At least not on purpose. It was hard to gloat when the villain croaked, after all.

But it came down to one thing: he didn't need the rest of these clowns laughing at him.

The lock on the safe clicked and Luminas looked at them dubiously. "Is this a set-up? It seems awfully…easy."

Bushroot shrugged. "We never said it was a _hard_ test."

She seemed to accept this because she yanked at the safe's handle, swinging it open and reaching both arms in. Megavolt didn't expect her to find much in there, but after groping around for a minute, she held up three bags of money.

"A fifty percent increase in our profits over the last time we made a withdrawal," Liquidator said gleefully, taking one of the bags from her.

Clutching the other two to her chest, she said, "I suppose it's too much to hope for that we're going to split this loot evenly?"

Quackerjack plucked them out of her arms before she could stop him. "You learn the rules fast."

Her ears flattened against her head but she didn't protest. Either that or she was waiting for a more opportune moment.

Suddenly, there was an explosion of smoke in the doorway, and Bushroot yelped, "Oh no!" before scrambling for the hallway behind the counter. The rest of them wasted no time in following him, ducking down in the shadows as the all-too-familiar monologue began.

"I am the terror that flaps in the night!"

"Hm," Megavolt mused, "guess we kind of forgot that this bank only has the one door…"

The others shushed him from their various positions in the dark hallway.

"I am the drive-through with only one lane open on your lunch break!"

It was an effort for all of them, if Megavolt was any judge, to stifle their groans. Then, Luminas's head shot up and her ears swiveled back, as though she was listening to something, though Megavolt couldn't hear anything except Darkwing's posturing out in the lobby. Her eyes were wide in concentration until Quackerjack grabbed at the bangs hanging over her face and yanked at them.

She hissed in pain and slapped his hand away, then whispered, "Hold up, I have to check something."

"But the only way out of here is past Darkwing!" Bushroot said.

"I'm not checking on a way out," she replied, in that cryptic way of hers, as she crept along the wall until she reached the back of corridor. There was a tiny window on the back wall, much too small for any of them, except Liquidator, to fit through. "Distract Darkwing if you have to," she added.

So much for testing her, though if truth be told, Megavolt already knew she could hold her own against the masked moron. Still, it seemed like someone should see what she was up to. It seemed pretty unlikely that she was trying to pull a fast one on them, but you never knew…especially if she was going to try to grab the haul that rightfully belonged to the rest of them.

Bushroot, Liquidator, and Quackerjack looked at each other, and then looked at him. Eerily, they all had the same expression on their faces, an expression that said quite clearly, _you were the one that started this whole thing, she's your responsibility so go make sure she's not up to anything funny_.

He didn't think he was projecting, there.

"All right, _all right_, I'll go babysit her!" he hissed, turning around and making his way back to where Luminas was peering out the window.

She'd cracked it open and had her ear pressed to it, listening to something in the alley below. Now that Megavolt was closer, and the window was open, he could hear what she must have—voices.

Or rather, one voice. "Why does he make me stay in the Ratcatcher, anyway?" it was grumbling. "_Every _time anything good happens, I miss _everything_ because it's not _safe_."

Megavolt did his best to peer out but his goggles hit against the glass with a clunk, earning him an elbow in the side from Luminas, a whispered, "Keep it down!" from Quackerjack, and a dismal, "Wonder how long Darkwing'll need to take us out when we're all trapped back here?" from Bushroot.

"What are you looking at?" Megavolt demanded in a low voice.

Luminas shifted to get a better view into the alley. "_That_," she said, pointing.

Megavolt tried to see what she was indicating, but all he could make out was Darkwing's motorcycle and that little girl that followed him around everywhere, who was currently saying, "He'd better be careful or my restrictive home life might just start taking its toll in other areas. Like my _grades_."

Turning to Megavolt, Luminas asked, "Do you guys seriously have no idea who she is?"

"No, do you?"

"No, of course not, but—"

"Ah ha!" an entirely different, and much more unwelcome, voice shouted from behind them. The five of them all whirled around as Darkwing Duck proclaimed, "Now I have you, you pernicious purveyors of perfidy! Drop the cash and stick 'em up!"

Quackerjack grinned and pulled a gun out. "Ooh, do you want to play gangsters and coppers, Darkwing?"

Aiming his gas gun at Quackerjack, Darkwing replied, "I prefer to play _heroic_ caped crusader and gangsters, _Quackerjack_. And I hate to tell you this, but the gangsters _always_ lose!"

Quackerjack pulled the trigger on the gun and a spring-loaded boxing glove shot out, knocking Darkwing's gas gun out of his hands.

Darkwing held a finger up and said, "Of course, he doesn't always win without a dramatic fight sequence," before ducking out of the way as simultaneously, two potted palms in the lobby took a swing at him, the drinking fountain erupted with a powerful spray of water, a bolt of electricity arced towards him, and a fireball hit the floor where his feet had been.

Flipping back onto his feet, Darkwing pulled a canister of weed killer out of his jacket and sprayed it at one of the plants just as it reached for him with its leaves. The palm wilted immediately and when the duck turned the nozzle towards the other plant, it shrank back and scuttled back to its corner. "I've always thought this place could use some landscaping," Darkwing declared, rounding on Bushroot, who ducked. For a second, Darkwing looked smug, until a wave of water flowed over Bushroot and washed the masked mallard across the room, slamming him into the wall. "Plumbing needs a little work, too," he spluttered.

Megavolt jumped up on a desk to avoid the water still sloshing around Darkwing, and, pointing a crackling finger at him, said with a laugh, "Don't worry, Dimwing, the electrical's entirely up to code."

"And which code would _that _be, Sparky?" Darkwing asked, getting to his feet. "The villain's code?" Then he grimaced. "Ooh, that wasn't very good, was it?"

"Yeah, even for you," Megavolt said, wincing at Darkwing's terrible attempt at banter. "In fact," he added maliciously, "I'm so offended that I think I'll just have to _fry_ you!"

Darkwing flourished his cape. Geez, _even_ when he was about to be char-broiled, that doofy duck just couldn't help showing off.

The cape came off Darkwing's shoulders, though, and when it hit Megavolt in the face with a wet slap, he remembered the soaking that the duck had just gotten, which was good, because then, at least, the short-circuiting didn't take him by surprise.

When he picked himself up off the ground, he saw that Darkwing had managed to ensnare Quackerjack with the spring from the jester's toy gun, with the boxing glove hitting Quacky on the head every few seconds. That still left Darkwing with Bushroot, Liquidator, and Luminas to deal with, but Megavolt couldn't help but notice, as he glanced around, that Luminas was nowhere to be seen.

Then he spotted her, lurking in the shadows, holding two of the three bags of money that they'd stolen—well, he guessed technically she'd done all the work but this _was _a test heist, after all—while she crept towards the door. He scrambled to his feet and raced after her, trusting Bushroot and Liquidator to take Dorkwing out. He wasn't much good shorted out, anyway.

He grabbed her arm as she clattered down the steps at the front of the building, asking in an all-too-pleasant tone, "And where do you think _you're_ going?"

She didn't look nearly as guilty and ashamed as he'd expected her to. "To find more out about that girl," she said, yanking her arm out of his grip.

"Gonna pay her off?" Megavolt asked, nodding towards the money.

"Oh…this…?" she said with a little chuckle. _There_ was the guilt. "I was just…making sure that…uh…Darkwing didn't take it back!"

"Uh huh."

She scowled and shoved it into his arms. "Oh, fine. But you can't blame a girl for trying, can you?"

"No, no, that was good, if you hadn't at least _tried _to sneak off with it, I'd have seriously doubted your villain credentials."

At that, she cracked a smile, then jerked her head towards the alley. "I really _was_ going to see what's up with her. Want to come?"

There was a rumble down the street, and both of them turned to look at a tree that had just uprooted itself and was stomping towards the Building and Loan. After a moment, Bushroot came scrambling out of the door, dragging Quackerjack behind him, and the tree scooped both of them up with a branch before turning and making its way back down the street, leaving cracked asphalt in its wake.

A jet of water shot out the door after the tree and swirled around a manhole cover before disappearing into the sewer, and Megavolt counted on his fingers swiftly before realizing that him and Luminas were the only un-vanquished villains left.

It was a timely realization, too, because just then, Darkwing leapt through the doorway, prompting Megavolt to grab Luminas's arm again and yank her into the shadows next to the stairs. When she opened her mouth to snarl at him he clamped a hand over it.

But rather than launching into some pretentious monologue, Darkwing just paused, then descended the stairs and walked right past where Megavolt and Luminas were crouching, looking, to Megavolt's surprise, deep in thought. What, no gloating? He'd just beaten—at least, that was probably what he _thought_—the Fearsome Four. Plus one.

Once the duck had passed them, Megavolt let go of Luminas, who turned her head for the express purpose of glaring at him. Then, without a word, she crept after Darkwing. Normally at this juncture, Megavolt would have figured that he'd gotten off really easy and headed the opposite direction, but some vestigial conscience made him sigh in exasperation and follow her.

She crouched and peeked around the corner of the building, and Megavolt followed suit.

The two of them watched as Darkwing approached his motorcycle, occupied by the red-headed girl, whose hands were jammed onto her hips. "You didn't get them?" she demanded.

Darkwing grit his teeth, then said, "I scared them off."

Yeah, that was more like the Darkwing Megavolt knew.

The girl snorted with laughter, and when Darkwing glared at her, she hastily turned the sound into a poorly disguised cough. "If Quiverwing Quack had been there to help…" she began.

Darkwing cut her off, with air quotes around the superhero name, too. Evidently the duck was mad about the five of them getting away. _That_ was a low blow, even for him. "'Quiverwing Quack' should be at home sleeping, which is where she would _be_ if Launchpad hadn't had that—that…where did he have to go again?"

"Aviation expo," the girl reminded him.

"Right." With a scowl, he said, "We might just have to think about getting you a baby—"

"No" she gasped. "Don't say the b-word!"

"—sitter," Darkwing finished calmly.

"I stayed in the Ratcatcher!"

Taking his hat off his head and wringing water out of it, Darkwing remarked, "Which has been the exception, not the rule."

The two of them glared at each other for a moment, and then the kid snapped, "You know, you're not much fun when you go all protective and parent-y."

Darkwing turned, making it impossible for Megavolt to see his face, but there was a certain slope to his shoulders that didn't look pretentious or egotistical at all. It looked, actually, like some kind of…sadness. Or resignation. Something very un-Darkwing Duck.

If the mallard responded to the girl, it was impossible to hear what he said, because he started the motorcycle at that moment, barely giving Megavolt and Luminas time to throw themselves back under cover of the shadows cast by the building. The vehicle roared by, and Megavolt didn't think anything more of the conversation he'd just heard as he gathered up the sacks of money again.

"Well?" he said to Luminas, who was staring after Darkwing's motorcycle. She started and turned towards him. "Are we going or what?" Megavolt added.

Raising her eyebrows, she asked, "Going where? In case you didn't notice, everyone am-scrayed."

He pointed to the root-shaped tracks gouging the street, several of which had sprung leaks from the water main below. "Think you can follow Bushroot's pal?"

Luminas looked annoyed that she'd missed something so obvious. Or maybe _he_ was just annoyed that she'd missed something so obvious. Either way, she said, "Let's get going then, Sparky."

There was a spring in her step as she started off in the same direction that the tree had gone, which seemed only to get bouncier when he scowled and snapped, "I already told you, _don't_ call me _Sparky_."


	7. Chapter 7

CHAPTER 7

"Hey, we should be charging you admission to this," Megavolt said as they trudged up the hill to Bushroot's greenhouse. "You're getting a tour of Fearsome Four hideouts!"

There was a rustling from the grass on the lawn, despite the stillness of the night, and Luminas looked around uneasily. Megavolt wouldn't say he was _used_ to Bushroot's less-than-normal security system, but it mostly left him alone, and so he tried not to think about it. Luminas, though, was staring at the way some of the taller grasses were waving in complete absence of wind.

Finally, she shook herself and seemed to have to tear herself away from the sight. He didn't tell her that there was poison ivy lurking out in the field. Or the fact that he'd found that out the hard way. "Liquidator would probably agree with you," she said, still sounding distracted.

"The Liquidator is _always_ open to a profitable new business venture," a voice said suddenly from the darkness. Both of them jumped, and Liquidator appeared from wherever he'd been lurking. The cracked birdbath sitting in front of the building was a good bet.

Sneering, Megavolt asked, "Bushroot's security system not good enough? He needs you out here now, too?"

"Bushroot's security system is fine," Liquidator replied. "And it probably would have let you by. But it doesn't know _her_, does it?"

When both of them looked towards Luminas, Megavolt thoughtfully, and Liquidator with a less-than-nice gleam in his eyes, she said with a nervous smile, "Maybe we should get inside."

Liquidator's eyes narrowed at her, and Megavolt was pretty sure he knew what the other villain was thinking. "She wasn't chickening out," Megavolt said, unprompted by either of them. Indicating the bags of money he was still carrying, he added, shooting a glance at her, "She just wanted to make sure the Ego That Flaps in the Night didn't get his hands on these."

Her mouth twitched into a conspiratorial smile for half a second, which Liquidator probably saw, but it didn't really matter. Megavolt was vouching for her, and that was enough, regardless of what she'd been up to. It was weird, for someone who'd gotten used to not trusting anybody over the years, but the Fearsome Four…well, they trusted each other.

Inside, Quackerjack was sprawled across Bushroot's workbench, holding an icepack to his knee. Bushroot was dabbing some kind of horrible smelling sappy stuff on his own cuts and bruises. Giving the jester a puzzled look, Megavolt asked, "I thought you got hit on the head?"

Switching the icepack to rest against the side of his face, the duck said, "I _did_. But then Melonhead's overgrown _dandelion_ smacked me in the knee."

"Hey," Bushroot snapped, "show a little more gratitude! That tree saved you a trip to the super-villain prison!"

Quackerjack just stuck his tongue out and blew a raspberry.

Liquidator had the kind of long-suffering look on his face that implied he'd been enduring this sort of exchange for a while now, and he glided over to where the third bag of money from the Building and Loan safe was sitting. Megavolt threw the two he was carrying onto the table next to the bag. "Even shares," Liquidator said. "And twenty percent for Luminas," he added as an afterthought.

"Generous," she said sourly. "Considering I did most of the work."

"You also skipped out on the Darkwing fight," Quackerjack pointed out, swinging his feet from his perch on the workbench.

"I don't know how you'd have noticed, considering you looked KOed for most of it," she said. When Quackerjack glared at her, she turned to the rest of them. "So did I pass your test or what?"

Bushroot shrugged. "Good enough for me."

Counting the money out into piles, Liquidator said, "You have my iron-clad guarantee that we'll have your back…as long as it's convenient." He added this last part with a wolfish grin, and Luminas actually returned it with a hesitant smile.

"Well, I definitely can't claim that I didn't know what I was getting into," she said.

As the four of them gathered up their shares of the loot, Bushroot asked her, "So what _were_ you doing, Luminas? I'll buy it that you weren't chickening out."

She looked around in confusion. "How did you hear that? We were outside…"

Tapping his head, he replied, "Telepathic link with plants, remember? I guess it's one of the benefits to being a mutated freak."

She didn't correct him about being a freak—why would she, after all, he _was_ one—but an odd look flickered through her eyes. Hadn't she said something about the Fearsome Four being 'like her'? Details of past conversations weren't always that clear to Megavolt. Hm, maybe Luminas was one of those tortured-soul types. If she was, she'd luckily kept all of that on the back-burner. Megavolt really didn't need to deal with other people's torment. He'd had to threaten to zap Bushroot on more than one occasion when the plant-duck had started in on it.

Flicking her bangs out of her face, Luminas said, "I want to know who that girl is that follows Darkwing around. It's _weird_," she added, when she got at least one eye-roll in response.

"Why does it matter _who_ she is?" Quackerjack asked.

Luminas looked around at them, like she was trying to decide whether or not to say what she was thinking. "Well," she finally began, "what if she's his daughter?"

There was a long silence, finally broken by Megavolt, who said only, "Huh."

Liquidator's eyes were narrowed. "Nine out of ten parents would never allow their children to accompany them on the kinds of outings Darkwing brings her on."

Raising an eyebrow, she said, "I think Darkwing might just be that leftover ten percent."

Liquidator actually looked somewhat horrified. "I think you may be right about that, at least," he said simply.

Quackerjack looked confused. "How can Darkwing have a daughter?" he asked puzzledly. "He's always out thwarting us." Then, he paused. "But he does have that irritating ability to seem like he's in two places at once, I guess…"

Bushroot's vine-y arms were folded across his chest as he stared out at the hill rolling away from his greenhouse. "An alter ego, that's how," he said, then turned around. "Darkwing must have an alter ego, some perfectly normal seeming suburbanite persona that he uses." In more of a murmur, he added, "I've actually kind of wondered if they were related somehow…"

Luminas gave him a grateful look for the support. "Except he's bad at keeping them separate. We can use that."

Chuckling, Liquidator said, "The girl's value as a bargaining chip hasn't exactly escaped our notice."

"Oh," Luminas said, deflating slightly.

Megavolt gave her an incredulous look. "Wow, talk about insulting, you don't think we've noticed how close they are? You don't think we'd _try_ to use her against him?"

With an awkward clearing of her throat, she replied, "Um, I guess I wasn't really thinking."

Quackerjack balanced the icepack on top of his head. "That's why it doesn't matter, see, Loomsy? He _always_ tries to save her. Who cares if she's his daughter or the president of his fan club or his great aunt Doris?"

The look that she was giving him was probably related more to the fact that he'd just called her 'Loomsy' than anything else. "Well, _I'm _going to find some way to use it against him," she said.

Bushroot shrugged. "Good luck. We haven't had much." When she gave him a dubious look, he added, "I mean it. I think you'd be a good addition to the Fearsome Five."

"You're probably just scared she's going to grill you if you don't say that," Quackerjack sneered.

Rolling his eyes, Bushroot said, "Get a life, Quackerjack."

"Grow a pear," the jester shot back, though he couldn't resist giggling.

"No wonder you guys are so under Negaduck's thumb," Luminas muttered.

The silence in the greenhouse was sudden and absolute. Even one of the ferns turned towards her. Megavolt thought about snapping that if she wanted him to stick up for her, she couldn't say stuff like that—but then again, he didn't really want her to know that he'd stuck up for her.

It was Bushroot, finally, who spoke. "If you're lucky, you can be too," he said.

Luminas winced. It could have been at Bushroot's sarcasm or bitterness. "You _could_ just stand up to him," she said. "You guys all have super-powers. Well." She glanced at Quackerjack. "Mostly. Negaduck doesn't. He just has firepower."

"_Just_," Megavolt muttered.

"My super-power is my _wackiness_," Quackerjack replied loftily.

Liquidator slid his share of the loot into a bag. There was an uncharacteristically serious expression on his face. "You should know, part of the contract you want to sign with Negaduck means he finds the thing you're most afraid of losing."

Megavolt and Quackerjack both looked at him. Bushroot was staring too, but not in the same way—more like he was just surprised that Liquidator had _said_ that, not so much surprised by what he was saying.

For a second, he glanced at the three of them, and discomfort swam across this face. Then he turned back to her and added, "From one super-villain to another, I'd do your best to convince him that that thing is your life." Slinging the bag over his shoulder, he said more easily, "And business hours for _this_ villain are over. I'm sure I'll see the three of you—maybe four—soon." With a nod to Bushroot, he said, "Reggie, the use of your hideout is appreciated, as always."

Burdened as he was by the loot, he had to use the front door, and Megavolt took his leaving as good of a reason as any to get out of there himself.

He'd kind of forgotten that they'd walked. Not that he couldn't make the walk back, but he'd been looking forward to jumping into the car and for this trip to take twenty minutes, not an hour or more on pitch black country roads. He guessed it had been just as dark when they'd make the outbound walk, but the post-crime high must have made it seem not as bad.

Quackerjack and Mr. Banana Brain made a great show of discussing whether or not to let Megavolt and Luminas walk with them, until finally Megavolt just started off by himself, forcing both Luminas and Quackerjack to scramble to catch up with him.

And so the three of them set off down the dark road. Hardly anyone came out here—once in awhile, in the distance, a pair of headlights would slice through the dark silently, and the faint roar of a motor might follow a few seconds later, drifting over the fields on the early summer air, the delay between sight and sound proof of its distance and their isolation. But mostly it was just the dark, an owl hooting now and then, and their shoes scuffing on the gravel road.

Megavolt wondered idly if it had always been so deserted, or if the presence of a notorious super-villain kept people away. Probably a little bit of both. He didn't know much about Bushroot's pre-mutant life—he may have been told, but he didn't necessarily remember—but he thought the other villain had always been a loner. Probably liked it out here, with just the fields for company, even before people had been running from him in terror.

Quackerjack interrupted his musings by scooping up a few rocks from the side of the road and juggling them, once in awhile letting one of them fall on either Megavolt's or Luminas's head. "One day left to take out Darkwing, Luminas," he said, his teeth gleaming in the moonlight. "Don't take this the wrong way, but I don't think you can do it."

Another rock hit her on the head, punctuating this statement, and she rubbed at the spot and glowered at him. "Guess you'll owe me an apology then, won't you?"

"I'll apologize now. I'm really sorry Negaduck's gonna run you out of town with a chainsaw." He stopped, catching all the rocks he was keeping aloft neatly in one hand. "Oh wait, no I'm not."

With that, he resumed juggling.

Megavolt wondered if that faint smoldering odor he could smell was from someone's fireplace, or if it was Luminas. Glancing over at her, he asked, "So do you have a plan?"

The idea seemed to take her by surprise. Not a good sign. "I'll come up with one," she said. "What do _you_ care, anyway?"

He opened his mouth to answer, then had to shut it as he tried to remember if he _did_ care. There was _some _reason that he did, wasn't there…? Oh! Right, the whole reputation thing. But then again, why would he tell _her_ that? "I don't," he finally said. "Just curious."

With a stubborn look on her face, she said, "I'll think of something."

The conversation petered out after that, and the three of them walked on in silence, until they finally reached the outskirts of the city. They were halfway through one of St. Canard's more sketchy neighborhoods—not the Bad Part of Town, but close—when Quackerjack pointed down a cross street and said, "This is where I get off. Closest hideout."

"Oh, yeah," Megavolt said, stopping. "The landlady figure out what all those rubber chickens were doing on the laundry line yet?"

"Not yet," Quackerjack said. He looked disdainfully at Luminas, then asked, "Hey Megs, want to come back to my hideout with me?"

"And do what?"

The duck twisted one tassel of his hat around a finger. "I dunno. Something fun." When Megavolt just kept staring at him, Quackerjack added, "I might need your expertise on a new toy."

"You mean you want to hook me up to it to charge it."

"Weeeell…among other things." He relented and said, "I can't get the wiring right. And the soldering keeps melting when I turn it on."

Probably wasn't insulating the wires. Quacky _always_ forgot the insulation. Glancing over his shoulder at Luminas, who was looking around and sort of edging away like she thought she should probably leave, but didn't really want to, he sighed and said, "Maybe tomorrow. I should probably stay and talk to Lighter Hands over there for a second."

Quackerjack's manic smile subsided into a scowl and he shot a glare at the cat. "I _see_," he said.

"You see what?" Megavolt demanded.

But Quackerjack was in no mood to answer after this slight. Like it was _really_ fun for Megavolt to sit around charging up some teddy bear that probably had laser-shooting hooks for hands or something. Besides, he'd been shorted out. He'd need to charge _himself_ up first, and then… Megavolt's thoughts trailed off as it occurred to him that maybe, possibly, Quackerjack just wanted to…to hang out.

In which case he should have just _asked_. Anyway, you couldn't keep Quackerjack down long. He was already shooting a slingshot loaded with cherry bombs through the open windows of tenements along the street, and no doubt in less than twenty-four hours would have forgotten, or wouldn't care, that Megavolt hadn't gone with him. Actually, Megavolt probably would have forgotten by then too.

"Are you going back to the roaches?" he asked her after a few minutes of more silent walking had passed.

"Oh." She looked miserable at the thought. "Guess so."

"You know how to get back to that part of town, right?" He didn't know why he asked that. Like he cared. Geez, she could throw fire, no one would mess with her.

They were at the corner of Twentieth and Beakington. His apartment hideout was only a few more blocks, her roach motel was on the other side of town. "Um," she said, looking at the street signs, "yeah. I can figure it out."

Again, not a good sign.

"Guess next time I see you you'll either have killed Darkwing or not," he said instead of walking away. He could have smacked himself.

"I'll have killed him," she said. This time she didn't sound quite as confident.

"Yeah." He left it at that. She was probably smart enough to figure out that he didn't mean the syllable as a ringing endorsement. "So, um, off you go," Megavolt said awkwardly.

She cleared her throat. "Yep, looks that way."

The two of them stood there in silence for a moment, under a street light that he'd liberated the bulb from months ago. Then Megavolt said quickly, "Do you want some help?" When she raised an eyebrow at him, he added, "Darkwing's pretentious, and egotistical, and pretty dumb, but I have to admit, he has a knack for winning against all of us."

"You don't think I can do it?" she bristled, her own doubt forgotten as a small flame ran from one of her ears to the other and crackled off her many earrings.

The flame made him think about lying to her, but what remained of his conscience forced the truth out of him. "I _know_ you can't do it," Megavolt told her bluntly. "And so does Negaduck. Why do you think he made this deal in the first place? He's expecting you to fall flat on your face and get life in that fancy new super-villain prison." When she opened her mouth to respond, he went on, "C'mon, Luminas, I know you're new in town but are you really that clueless? I've been at this super-villain thing for…well, _years_…not sure how many exactly…but uh…that's not the point." He had to stop to remember the point, and when he did, he forged on, "Darkwing and I have been fighting that whole time and I've tried to kill him more times than I can remember, and you know what happens every time?"

"Well," she guessed, "considering he's still alive, you fail?"

"I _fail_," he repeated emphatically. "Me, Quackerjack, Bushroot, Liquidator, Negaduck, Dr. Slug, F.O.W.L, Taurus Bulba, every other crook and purse-snatcher and murderer in this city, we _always_ fail. And you really think you're just going to waltz in, with your fire thing and the whole spunky-girl-villain attitude, and succeed where the greatest criminal masterminds have been thwarted time and time again?!" Sparks spit off his hat and he lowered his arms to hang less dramatically than they'd been at his sides. "Face it, Luminas, you got set up. Just because Negaduck didn't kill you on sight doesn't mean he's not going to get his revenge."

There was a mix of emotions flickering in her eyes—anger, mostly, but beyond that an unwillingness to accept what he was saying despite knowing it was true. She looked away from him, put her hands on her hips, and then, in a fidgety way that reminded him of himself, removed them and crossed her arms over her chest. "So if it's such a lost cause, why did you offer to help me?"

"Good question," he muttered. Any other time, he thought he probably would walked out of there, figuring that he'd done what he could for someone hopelessly out of her depth. Heck, the fact that he was telling her any of this at all was a huge favor to her, since apparently she couldn't figure it out on her own. Honestly, this girl wanted to join the Fearsome Five? Negaduck would chew her up and spit her out in her present state. "Look, kid," he said, "I should've told you all this in the first place. I should've warned you the first time you said you wanted to join the Fearsome Five that Negaduck would never go for it."

"So why didn't you?" she demanded.

He looked away. "I don't know. I guess…I guess because it didn't seem like the worst idea."

For a long moment, she stared at him. When she spoke again, her tone was less angry, but more suspicious. "Is this the part where you tell me the real reason the four of you have been helping me?"

"Uh…didn't I already do that…?"

"You told me _something_. Doesn't mean I believed it."

Megavolt scowled. Being a convincing liar had never been one of his strong qualities. "We figured if we helped you out, you'd do something for us," he finally said reluctantly.

"Oh, so you just planned on _using_ me," she snapped.

"You know, I can already tell that you have a trust issues," he muttered. When she continued glaring at him, he admitted with a sneer, "Yes. Happy? The more we help you, the more you owe us."

Jamming her hands onto her hips, she asked, "And what exactly were you going to use me to do?"

He squinted past her shoulder down the dark street, but could still see the look she was giving him. Then, for a second, he couldn't remember what they'd planned on using her for, which would have been convenient. Though she was bound to get mad and shoot fire at him either way, probably. "Well, see, we have this little problem with Negaduck," he finally said.

"Yeah, and?"

"Aaaand," he said, "we're probably going to have to kill him."

She stared at him, lips pursed, and he calculated how fast he could throw himself to the sidewalk to avoid getting grilled. Then she growled, making him flinch, before whirling and stomping a few feet away. A police car went screaming by, lights flashing, while she stood there, arms crossed tightly over her chest. Finally, she said, "I don't know why I'm surprised. This is what always happens."

Megavolt blinked. "Er, you've tried to join super-villain gangs before? I didn't think there were too many outside St. Canard…"

Whirling, she said, "People think I'm a _joke_."

There was something a lot more than anger in her voice. Frustration, and the rage, of course, but also a desperate sadness that made him take a step back. The nearest streetlight—how had he missed that one?—illuminated half her face in orange light. He cleared his throat. "Before or after you start chucking fireballs at them?" he asked.

This didn't seem either to mollify or amuse her. "The four of _you _obviously think I am."

Megavolt's brow furrowed. This conversation didn't seem like it was going to go in any productive direction. The only direction, actually, that he thought it was going to go in was him trying to avoid bodily harm. "No offense, Luminas, but you seem to be conflating two separate issues here…"

But apparently, she had something to say now, and she was going to say it. "_No one_ takes me seriously," she said, flinging her arms open wide (that made him flinch again) and then snapping them down to her sides, her fingers twitching. "They're all like _Negaduck_. They think I can't be a super-villain because I'm…I don't know, too young, or too…"

"Flakey?" Megavolt suggested.

"Right, exact—hey!"

He shrugged.

Her fingers curled and sparks sizzled on the ends of them. "That's why I came to St. Canard, because I kept hearing that the crime's out of control here, that the police force is incompetent and they've just got this masked vigilante. And that there are _super-villains_. I figured if there were people like me—freaks—then I'd finally get taken seriously."

There was a long, pregnant silence, in which Megavolt mulled over several possible responses, none of which he liked for various reasons (one made him sound like an idiot, another just pedestrian, and one he was pretty sure would get him torched).

Freaks, huh? So she _did _have a self-loathing complex. He kind of wished he could tell people like her—and Bushroot—to buck up. They had _super-powers_! That wasn't a burden, it was _cool_. Except he knew enough about the inner workings of the mind to realize that no one liked being told that. And the last people you wanted to patronize were super-villains, even if you were one yourself.

He didn't even know any more if she was still mad about the whole them-using-her thing. This conversation had moved on to much bigger issues (hers, obviously), and he was feeling kind of lost, and he still thought that if he was smart he'd walk away.

But he didn't.

"Look, Luminas," he finally said uncomfortably, "all of this—it's nothing personal, really."

Her bark of laughter was so sudden, and so crazed, that he jumped. "Not _personal_?" she demanded. "When are you going to get it, Sparky? Maybe it's not personal to you or Quackerjack or Bushroot or Liquidator. Maybe you guys meet new villains every week. Heck, I don't know, maybe you _forget_ you meet them because they're so dime-a-dozen." She stopped and took a breath, her chest heaving a little.

Huh, up to this point he'd thought she was pretty sane. She didn't look it now. Her eyes were wild and her hair was wreathing her face, the streetlights giving it more of an orange glow, reflecting off the fiery streaks already there and making it look like flames licking at her head. Without blinking, she added fiercely, "But this is _everything_ to me. _This is personal_."

He stared at her, eyes wide in surprise at this outburst, passionate even by her standards. And he remembered, then, what had made him speak up for her in the first place. She was young, she was just starting out. He remembered that period of his own life—well, sort of, but some days not really at all—and it hadn't been easy. No one in the old guard thought you meant business. They thought you were some upstart, and back in those days, back before St. Canard had been full of super-villains, back long enough that Megavolt was starting to feel kind of old the more he thought about it, being super-powered made you even more of a freak than in the newer, more tolerant St. Canard.

One thing he _didn't_ ever forget was the rage at being told his super-powers were a crutch. That he was soft or something, or not mean enough or enough of a villain because he didn't do things 'the old fashioned way'. Actually he'd never found out what the old-fashioned way was, since the crook who'd made the mistake of saying that ended up being the first murder that had gotten him sent to the electric chair.

_He_ was the old guard now. And here was this kid, just looking for a break. Maybe he didn't understand what Luminas's hang-ups were, exactly. Which, clearly, she had plenty of. But hang-ups—he understood those.

A television blared suddenly in the apartment building behind them, its volume turned all the way up. Neither of them flinched.

"I take you seriously," he said.

Her mouth dropped open in a little 'oh' of surprise, and then she closed it and narrowed her eyes at him, like she thought he was making fun of her. He returned the stare, moving his eyes only for a moment to glare at a passing small-time crook in leather and spikes who was eyeing the two of them, looking for something to mug them for. Luminas followed the direction of his gaze, and when she caught sight of Mr. Leather and Spikes, she rolled her eyes and held up a hand, a ball of flame burning in her palm. "We were having a private conversation, _do you mind_?"

She waited until he'd hurriedly disappeared around the nearest corner before turning back to Megavolt. Her expression was clearer, and all she said was, "Thanks."

"Yeah, well, it's not a compliment or anything," he muttered. "It's just the truth."

The last thing he wanted was her going on and on and insisting that he understood her or something. Taking someone seriously and _understanding _them were two different things, and he really hoped she knew the difference. There was a look in her eyes, just for a second, that made him afraid that she didn't. But then she nodded and didn't say anything else.

Neither of them spoke. Then, he asked curiously, "_Are_ you too young?"

"What?" she asked.

"You said people think you're too young."

"Oh." She hesitated, like she thought revealing her age was some big secret, then shrugged and said, "I'm twenty-six."

"_Twenty-six_? Pfft." Waving a hand, he said, "Pretty soon they'll be telling you you're too old!"

"I guess they say that to you?" she said, raising one eyebrow in a way that made him think she was maybe, possibly, taunting him.

"Hey, excuse me?" he demanded. "I'm not old! I may not be not _twenty-six_, but I mean, I'm only…uh…let's see, I was seventeen when I got my powers, and that was…um…" He tried to count on his fingers. "Well, that was…some…time ago…" That eyebrow was still arched. He ignored it. "I'm in my prime," he finished huffily.

There was definitely a smirk to go along with that raised eyebrow, but at his continued glowering, she wiped it off her face and settled her expression into something more professional. "You really want to help me?" she asked.

He hesitated. "Well, I do want Darkwing dead, and I feel kind of…" _…obligated to give you a hand_, was what he'd been about to say, but he stopped himself at the last minute. There was an expectant look on her face, but he left the sentence dangling. Instead, he said briskly, "We have a duck to kill, kid. Any ideas?"

There was a nasty smile spreading across her face. "We need to lure Darkwing Duck into a trap if we're going to have any chance at all," she said. "And I think I might know how to do it…"


	8. Chapter 8

Author's note: Thank you so much to everyone who's read this and again, thanks especially to everyone who's reviewed! You seriously can't imagine the thrill that goes through me when I see that review alert in my inbox. This is the last chapter, so hopefully it's been a fun ride. And a sequel _is_ in progress. :)

* * *

CHAPTER 8

"Gosalyn, didn't your dad say he didn't want you walking home this way?"

"Oh, come _on_, Honk, not you too. My dad's in over-protective parent mode, he'll get over it in a few days." Gosalyn paused at the entrance to the pedestrian underpass that went under the Duckburg Highway, her hands on her hips while she stared at her best friend. "No way am I going all the way down to that crossing guard. I've got Whiffle Boy Unleashed to beat before the new game's released next month!"

Honker blinked behind his glasses. "But, uh, haven't you already beaten Whiffle Boy Unleashed a dozen times?"

Waving a hand, she replied, "Thirteenth time's a charm. Now, are you coming or not?"

He looked even more nervous. "It's awfully dark in there…"

With a glance over her shoulder at the dim—in some places, completely dark—tunnel, Gosalyn said, "So there's a few lights burned out. What's going to happen in the middle of the day?"

"That lady got mugged here walking home from work last week," Honker pointed out.

"Well," Gosalyn said, "_I _think I know enough tricks from hanging around Dad to keep from getting mugged. C'mon, it'll be fine!"

Honker looked around. There was no one else in sight, just cars zooming by on the highway. A constant deep clacking and rumbling of tires filled the air every time one drove across the overpass. "What happened to that woman walking behind us?" he asked.

"Huh?" Gosalyn craned her neck and looked around him, but didn't see anyone on the sidewalk. She hadn't even really been aware of anyone else walking near them, but leave it to Honker to notice. "I don't know, she probably walks a different way. Who cares?" Why was everyone around her so paranoid lately? First Dad, now Honker. Launchpad, at least, had been acting like himself, but he wasn't due back in St. Canard for a few more days while he caught up with old friends and family in Duckburg. Who would have expected that Launchpad would have been the only sensible person left?

"I don't know," Honker said uncomfortably. "I j-just, well, noticed her, and she seemed like she was watching us…"

Gosalyn rolled her eyes. "We were walking in front of her, Honk, she probably _was_ watching us. This isn't exactly the most exciting stretch of St. Canard sidewalk." When Honker still looked doubtful, she sighed and said, "My dad's not going to find out."

"Oh, I'm not really worried about your dad…"

She lunged forward and grabbed his hand, pulling him into the tunnel with her. "Good, then let's go."

It _was_ dark inside the underpass, a lot more than Gosalyn had expected. But it was only about a hundred feet long, and they were already halfway to the other side. She stifled a sigh of relief. All Honker's worrying had actually gotten to her for a second there.

And then, suddenly, something grabbed her, yanking her up by the collar and leaving her dangling in the air. She lashed out on instinct, kicking and swinging with her fists, trying to make contact with whoever was holding her. "Run, Honker!" she yelled as her captor made a clumsy lunge for him.

The sound of his sneakers pounding and echoing in the tunnel reassured Gosalyn that he'd gotten away—which unfortunately wasn't much reassurance, because _she_ was still hanging in the air in someone's tight grip, the collar of her jersey choking her a little. She threw another punch but her captor continued to stay out of range.

"Let me go, you piece of villain scum!" Gosalyn shouted, fighting the way the stranglehold of her jersey made her gag reflex kick in. "Darkwing Duck's going find out about this and teach you a lesson—" Abruptly, she was swung around to face a roaring flame, only inches from her bill, which she shut immediately.

"That's what I thought," a woman's voice said. The flame went out, and for a moment, spots danced in front of Gosalyn's eyes. A disembodied voice, obscured by her adjusting vision, said, "We haven't met, kid, and for your sake, you'd better hope that we don't meet again."

Her vision finally began clearing, and Gosalyn saw her captor was a feline woman, who was currently regarding her with narrowed blue eyes. Gosalyn glared. "_You're_ the fire villain."

"Look at that. Adorable _and_ smart," the woman said boredly.

"When Darkwing finds out you're kidnapping me—"

"Please, why would I want to kidnap you?" the woman laughed. Gosalyn kicked out at her again, but the cat gave her a hard shake that rattled her teeth. "I just have a message for Darkwing Duck, and since you seem so well-acquainted with him, you seemed like the _perfect_ person to deliver it."

It didn't take a genius to sense danger in the woman's tone, and Gosalyn made a lightning switchover to naïve innocence mode. "Um, Darkwing Duck? I wouldn't say we're _close_…"

"Uh huh." The woman smiled slightly. "What _would_ you say? Friend of the _family_, perhaps?" Gosalyn didn't reply, and the woman's smile widened. It wasn't a nice smile. "So, _Gosalyn_," the woman went on, "why don't you find some way to give this message to Darkwing. His secret identity isn't so _secret _anymore, but for the right price, I might just be able to make sure the word doesn't get out."

Gosalyn gulped. She wanted, more than anything, to believe that the woman was lying, but she looked all too serious about what she was saying. Only a villain would be as gloating as she was about knowing Darkwing's identity. "Yeah?" she asked, trying to sound brave. "What's the price?"

"Well," the woman said, still smiling, "I see no reason why a nice little girl like you needs to know those kinds of financial details. Let Darkwing know that he can find out for himself if he's at the old car factory on the north side tonight. Midnight. And let him know that Luminas doesn't like to be kept waiting. If he's late, well…" Her other hand appeared again in front of Gosalyn's face, fingers spitting fire. "…I might just have to drop by _his_ place."

Luminas, huh? Dad would be happy to have a name, even if he wasn't going to be happy about any of the rest of this. Especially her being here in the first place. "You don't know where he lives," Gosalyn said. "_No one_ knows where Darkwing Duck lives."

Flames reflected in the woman's eyes. "Guess you'll find out tonight, won't you?" Gosalyn didn't react, not wanting to give away anything about her dad. "It's probably only about a twenty minute drive from the factory to his alter ego's house…"

"I don't believe you," Gosalyn growled, trying to kick the woman once more. She just ended up whirling around, the back of her jersey twisting uncomfortably with each spin.

"Mm. Well, that is _your_ problem, isn't it."

Without warning, the choking hold on her shirt disappeared, and Gosalyn fell heavily to the ground, scraping her knees as she landed. She jumped to her feet and backed away, keeping her eyes on the woman, who just stared at her, her hands on her hips. "Well?" the villain asked. "Don't you think you'd better get going?"

For a second, Gosalyn stared at her, expecting some kind of trick, but when the woman just kept staring, she took a couple steps back, then turned and ran.

She already knew she was going to tell her father everything about this conversation. And when she glanced back to see if the woman was still there, all she saw was an empty tunnel.

* * *

Megavolt took a step back, pushed the welding mask off his face, and admired his workmanship, arms folded across his chest. A shaft of evening sunlight cut through the dusty air of the old car factory, hitting the metal cage and throwing a hard gleam off it. He still had some wires to adjust, but it looked good. It looked effective. It looked deadly.

A two-stroke engine chugged outside and cut off, and he turned around to watch the door. In a moment, Luminas appeared in it, though she stopped in her tracks when she saw what he'd built. "Whoa," she said. "You made that in the last three hours?"

"You don't have to sound so surprised," Megavolt grumbled.

"No, I'm just…impressed."

She said it like _that_ surprised her, but he let it go. "Did you find the kid?" he asked instead.

With a crooked smirk, she replied, "Found, threatened, and sent off with our message."

"Yeah, well, let's just hope you're right about her."

"Hey, like Quackerjack said, it doesn't really _matter_ who she is, does it? Trust me," Luminas added, "I could tell from the look on her face. She ran right off to tell Darkwing that we're onto his secret identity. Oh, which reminds me, I sort of had to pretend like I knew where he lived. And I guess we should avoid situations where we have to call him by his alter ego's name, since we…don't know it."

Megavolt slipped his battery pack off and plugged it in before answering. Being fully charged was a necessity for tonight—no need to take any chances. "So this whole plan kind of hinges of a bunch of information we don't know."

"Yeah, I guess."

"Okay, well, I'll try not to mention any of it. Unless," he said hopefully, "you _do _know where he lives?"

She shrugged. "I just throw fire. I don't work miracles."

Returning to her side and tapping at his forehead thoughtfully with a finger, he said, "You know, the thing is, I'm pretty sure I _did_ find something out about Dorkwing's secret identity. Don't remember what, though. Or where…"

When he trailed off, Luminas said, "You know, that memory loss is kind of a handicap in our line of work."

With a dismissive gesture, he replied, "Hey, as long as I remember the important stuff, the rest of it's just details. You know, like, uh…"

"Darkwing's identity?" she asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Yeah, or my name…" he said, then brightened. "But who cares? I don't need to know my name to rob banks or liberate lightbulbs!"

Her brow furrowed, but she didn't remark on this. Instead, she motioned towards his project and asked, "So what is it?"

"A trap," he replied proudly. The sunlight was more gold than yellow now as the sun sank towards the horizon, and it made the contraption glow like it was lit from within. He'd assembled it out of metal scraps he'd found throughout the factory, pounding and welding them into long, thin strips, then weaving them together—with a little help from a blowtorch—until they formed a bowl-shaped cage. Then he'd stripped every wire and cable he could find in the place and wound them around the metal, finally running a bundle to a simple switch on a remote control he'd set up. Two settings: off and on. Live duck—and dead duck.

There was, however, a doubtful look on her face, so he said, "It's kind of a…reverse Faraday cage."

The doubtful look just got confused.

Imitating the shape of the trap with his hands, he said, "With a Faraday cage, when you're inside you're insulated from electric fields, right? Well this is the opposite. Once I switch this on, it draws electricity from the area around it and fries whatever's inside"

Luminas nodded, though she still didn't look like she understood the principle behind it. Oh well. He was used to it. Bushroot got stuff sometimes, but botany didn't really have much crossover appeal with physics and electrical engineering. "Is it going to work?" she asked.

Megavolt grinned and cocked a finger towards her. A spark jumped off the end of it. "We'll see, baby."

She lifted a bottle of Gander-ade to her mouth and took a swig of it, and Megavolt remembered something she'd said, that she needed to keep her strength up to take out Darkwing. Her constant guzzling of sports drinks—not to mention the Great Pyramid of Gander-ade in her roachy hideout—had given him the impression that her fire power maybe required a little more maintenance than she'd admitted.

"Hey," he asked, and she paused before she took another drink and looked at him. "I probably should've asked this already, but do you have some kind of weakness I should know about before we get into a major confrontation with Darkwing?"

Lowering the bottle to her side and staring at him, she said flatly, "Weakness."

"Yeah. You know, like me and water don't get along too well."

"I know what you meant."

He rolled his eyes. Trust issues, tortured-soul, and, apparently, a complex about not appearing weak. Real bundle of stability, Luminas was. Er, not that he should talk, necessarily. "So do you or don't you?"

"You don't have to worry about me, Sparky," she said.

"Oh, I'm not worried about _you_, I'm worried about me." Hm, possibly the wrong choice of words, considering the glare she was shooting at him.

After taking another long drink of Gander-ade, she said, "I'm a grown-up. I can take care of myself. I know my own limits."

And _he_ knew when an argument wasn't worth it. Holding up his hands, he said, "Okay, okay, keep your gloves on. Sheesh."

She pursed her lips but didn't pursue the subject, though she didn't even look that happy about the fact that he'd dropped it. Not that he had a long acquaintance with her or anything, but he was struck by the feeling, suddenly, that he didn't get Luminas, and that it would be a long time, if ever, before he did. Because he also had the feeling that, whether they succeeded here or not, she wasn't going anywhere. For the first time, the idea wasn't totally terrible.

"So what do we do with this thing?" she asked, pointing a thumb towards the cage.

Megavolt held up a finger, indicating that she should wait there, and then darted off to the stash of possibly-helpful materials he'd accumulated. After digging through it for a moment, he made a muffled noise of triumph and re-emerged with a bundle of metal cable. Dropping it at her feet, he said, "We'll use this to hang the cage, and then when Darkwing's underneath it, _wham! _We drop it on him."

She bent over and handed him the blowtorch that he'd abandoned on the floor. "Sounds like a plan."

Taking it from her, he said, "Hey, _you_ create fire…can you weld metal?"

"Um." She looked oddly uncomfortable at that. "I've never been much of a tradeswoman."

Megavolt watched her for a second, sensing he'd hit a nerve, though he couldn't imagine why. "Okay, then figure out how you're going to get Darkwing to stand under this thing."

As he began welding the cable into place, having clambered onto the top of the cage, he heard her say, "Oh, I was just planning on using you as a distraction."

He turned his head to glare at her, then realized that with the welding mask in place she wouldn't be able to see it. He still snapped a muffled, "I already did most of the work!"

"_I _had to hang around outside a school without getting the cops called on me until I found Darkwing's kid. That's commensurate work, if you ask me." Nevertheless, she wandered off into the shadowy machinery of the factory, leaving him to finish the job. Once the cable was welded in place, he gave it a few tugs, and when it held, he shrugged and jumped off the top of the cage, stopping himself just short of the ground to see if the cable could take his full weight.

With that done, all that he had left to do was hang the cage in place, though he supposed he should get Luminas's input on the location. Just as he was about to call her, she said from behind him, "By the way, are you hungry?"

"Gah!" Megavolt yelped, whirling around and putting a hand to his chest. "Don't sneak up on people like that!"

She held up a paper bag from the fancy organic grocery store in midtown. "I brought sandwiches."

For a second, he eyed the bag, and then he said, "That was…thoughtful…of you," he finally said, the pause due to the fact that this wasn't a word he was used to applying to his cohorts. It was barely in his vocabulary.

With a shrug, she said, "Not really. I was hungry and it was just as easy to steal two sandwiches as it was to steal one. Do you want it or not?"

"Oh. Well, sure." He took the proffered sandwich and then gestured to the cage. "We should probably get this thing into position though."

He was gratified that she actually had figured it all out, that meant all he had to do was rig up the pulley system to get the cage into the proper position. Once it was hanging from the rafters, ready to drop on an unsuspecting masked moron with a simple snip of the cable holding it up, Megavolt actually _was_ hungry. They sat on some old tires that were still laying around, eating the sandwiches which were, he had to admit, pretty good.

Sometimes, hours could pass, and at the end of them, Megavolt couldn't remember a single thing about them. That was the case tonight. Midnight crept up on him, the sky having grown dark long before without him noticing, and suddenly it was time to get into position and wait for Darkwing.

Megavolt had decided that the best place to watch this whole thing go down—since the only thing required of him was to cut the cable that would release the cage from the ceiling—was a lifeless robotic arm that was still bolted to the floor. Much of the conveyer belt that it had worked above was gone, but it was still standing sentinel in the dark factory, night after night…

He shook his head, ridding himself of that depressing thought, and shifted his position on top of the arm. He thought it was pretty close to midnight, but without a watch it was impossible to tell. Luminas had hidden herself away somewhere and was completely invisible, and he wasn't going to risk trying to talk to her and giving either of their positions away.

Minutes, maybe even an hour, passed like that. And then the factory door creaked open slowly.

From his perch, Megavolt could see that there was no one standing in it. Ooh, he _really_ didn't like this hiding and waiting. This wasn't the way to fight Darkwing! He almost wished there _was _a real super-villain code, so he could cite the appropriate section on killing your nemesis. It should definitely involve a plot. Money or city-wide domination or light bulb emancipation—whatever, the details weren't really important. Sure, the reverse Faraday cage was _cool_, but its only purpose was to do in whoever was inside it, and Megavolt was pretty sure that other, more blood-thirsty villains had that covered. Well, other villains and the justice system. He'd heard the St. Canard super-villain prison had installed a new electric chair with a high enough voltage to kill even him, and he tried to remember if he'd committed any murders that would get him sent there if he was arrested.

Wait—not important. What he was doing right now? Oh right, killing Darkwing. Well, that would count as a murder. Better not get caught.

No one had appeared in the door yet and it sat there, a half-open maw yawning out into the night, and—had he remembered to hook the cord up to the cage?! He squinted up into the rafters and could just barely make out the bundle of cables running up to it. Whew. Now, what had he been thinking about?

A cloud of gas appeared in the middle of the factory floor. "I am the terror that flaps in the night!" a voice boomed ominously. "I am the faulty battery that leaves you stranded by the side of the road! I…am Darkwing Duck!"

"Tell us something we _don't_ know," Megavolt muttered, shifting again on the robotic arm. His fingers were itching to fire a surprise bolt of electricity at that duck. Ooh, that would get him. He'd never see it coming. But he restrained himself. This was Luminas's fight. Even if it wasn't really going to be a fight. Semantics, whatever. _She_ was taking care of it, and he was…well, he was…hiding. That was, unfortunately, the right word for this.

The cloud of gas cleared, revealing Darkwing, his gas gun at the ready. When nothing but silence greeted his dramatic entrance, he straightened up and said, "And I am…wasting smoke canisters on an empty room." He peered around into the darkness, bringing his gas gun up again. "I prefer a more punctual super-villain," he muttered.

Nothing moved or made a sound in the factory.

And then a voice said, floating disembodied from the darkness, "Maybe I just like being fashionably early, Darkwing." There was a creak from somewhere. "So, you got the message?" Luminas's voice asked. "I'm glad Gosalyn was good enough to deliver it."

Darkwing turned around slowly, aiming his gas gun into every shadow. He'd definitely had a reaction at the kid's name, a surge of anger and trepidation flashing across his face, obvious even with the mask. "It's Luminas, right?" Darkwing said. "You know, it doesn't have to be this way. You don't have to join the Fearsome Five. Hanging around with them isn't going to get you anywhere but a nice, cozy jail cell."

With a laugh, she replied, "Was that an invitation, Darkwing? Are you asking me to join the sterling ranks of St. Canard do-gooders?"

After a horrified look flickered across Darkwing's features, the duck said, "Well, if you…_want _to, but joining the ranks of the law-abiding citizenry's always an option."

"Mm, tempting offer. I could probably find a job, right? Some office somewhere, where I'd look at spreadsheets and financial reports and contribute to society with my mostly-accurate data entry?"

The expression on Darkwing's face said he knew this wasn't going his way, but he still said, "Yep, a productive member of society, isn't that what we're all looking to be?"

There was a silence, and then stiletto heels clicked on the floor. "Not all of us."

Darkwing turned towards the sound of the noise, but the small flame that appeared, burning off Luminas's loosely curled fingers, was behind him. The light from the flame was just enough for Megavolt and Luminas's eyes to meet, and her mouth curved upwards crookedly.

Suddenly, Darkwing turned around, and Luminas put one hand on her hip. "I don't _have_ to join the Fearsome Five," she said. "I just really want to."

With that, the flame on her hand flared to a bright ball, and she slung it towards him. Darkwing dodged out of the way and aimed his gas gun into the shadows, but she was invisible again. Megavolt had to give it to her, the black outfit _did _seem to come in handy.

"You can't hide forever," Darkwing said, creeping towards the spot he'd last seen her. Megavolt shifted quietly to follow his progress, still not feeling right about hiding up there. The plan was that Luminas would lure Darkwing into position, and then Megavolt would cut the line holding the cage up with his trusty bolt cutter (the sort of thing a person should never leave home without). Then she'd throw the switch, and there'd be no more Darkwing. Ten minutes. Fifteen, tops.

Wow, in fifteen minutes, his practically lifelong nemesis was going to be nothing but ashes. It seemed really anticlimactic to think of it that way.

"Not forever," Luminas said, a chuckle audible in her voice. "Just till I have you where I want you."

Darkwing flipped a pair of night vision goggles out of his sleeve and held them up to his eyes, scanning the room with them. "I've gotta hand it to you, Luminas, for a newcomer, you've got the hackneyed villainous banter down already."

"Wow, that means a lot coming from you. Aren't you the master of hackneyed banter?"

Even Megavolt didn't know where she was, but he could see what she was doing. As her voice moved around the factory, disembodied in the dark, Darkwing was being maneuvered closer and closer to where the cage was hanging.

The set of Darkwing's shoulders betrayed his irritation with her comment. "The master of witty repartee, perhaps. Shame that you're going to be in prison after tonight, you could've learned a thing or two from me."

"That's funny," she remarked. "I was going to say the same thing, only you're going to be dead, and I'm going to have the run of St. Canard."

Just another step backwards, and Darkwing would be in position. Megavolt put a hand on the cable tied to the robotic arm and hefted the bolt cutter with his other hand, fitting the shears over the line.

But Darkwing and Luminas seemed to be at a standoff. He wasn't moving back, no matter how much she taunted him and moved around, and Megavolt was getting impatient. You couldn't just ask him to sit there with bolt cutters and a cable and _not_ do something.

Then, Luminas materialized out of the shadows, her fist clenched around something and the creases of that hand lit by an orange glow. "By the way, Darkwing," she drawled, "I owe you a couple cents for that Gander-ade."

His reaction was immediate. He brought the gas gun up and fired it, but Luminas skipped to one side and flung something at him, avoiding the canister and the explosion of gas.

Whatever she'd thrown hit him in the hand, making him yelp in pain, drop the gas gun and take that final, crucial step backwards. With relish, Megavolt brought the bolt cutter blades together, slicing cleanly through the cable.

The cage dropped, whistling with momentum, and Darkwing was still clutching at his hand and blowing on it frantically when it landed around him, trapping him. His head snapped up and he immediately aimed a Quack-Fu chop at the cage. The metal bounced him back, and since he'd used the hand that Luminas had somehow injured, he also clutched at that again.

Luminas swaggered out into the open, scooping up Darkwing's gas gun with one hand and whatever ballistic she'd thrown at him with the other. "I'll have to keep this," she said, indicating the gun. "But you really should let me pay you back, Darkwing," she added, holding a dime up and catching the moonlight with it. "I promise I won't super-heat it to its melting point this time."

Darkwing didn't take the dime. "You," he said with recognition. "I ran into you in the convenience store!" Scowling, he added, "I _knew_ there was something fishy about you."

It was hard to resist gloating now that Darkwing was trapped. Megavolt knew that he should have, but he didn't. He slid down the robotic arm and joined Luminas, whose arms were now crossed over her chest, and chuckled, "Guess those hero instincts of yours aren't too good after all, huh, Darkwing?"

With a glare, Darkwing said, "_Megavolt_. I should have known. This has something to do with the Gander-ade, doesn't it, you electrical egomaniac?" he demanded, searching for a weakness in the cage with his now recovered hand.

"Gander-ade?" Megavolt asked in confusion.

"Forget the routine, Sparky. The Gander-ade stolen by your fiery friend that you and the rest of the Fearsome Five have been fraternizing with! What fiendish felony have you fabricated?"

"Oh, that!" Megavolt said, the memory connecting in his brain. "Still don't have anything to do with it, Dipwing. Luminas just gets thirsty."

Darkwing's eyes narrowed, but he couldn't seem to stop himself from looking to Luminas for confirmation of this fact. She opened a fresh bottle—evidently she'd stashed them all over this place—and took a sip. "My favorite flavor happens to be blue," she informed the duck.

"_My favorite flavor happens to be blue,_" he mimicked her. "So what are you two larcenous low-lifes doing here?"

With a smirk, Luminas said, "Isn't that obvious? Trapping _you_."

"No one traps Darkwing Duck for long!" the mallard declaimed.

She uncrossed her arms and walked over to the remote control wired to the cage, with its single on/off switch. "I only have to keep you trapped for another couple seconds," she said. She held up the gas gun, still in her hands, and studied it. "You won't be needing this anymore," she remarked, and a glow suffused her hand, making its way into the gun until the metal softened and collapsed on itself. When it was nothing more than a twisted hunk of scrap, she tossed it to the ground and looked at him. "Darkwing, it's been nice knowing you, even if it's only been for a few days."

Understanding dawned on Darkwing's face, and he redoubled his search for a way out of the cage. Megavolt watched for a second, anticipating the blinding flare of electricity that would fry the duck, but the seconds ticked by, and it didn't come.

He glanced over his shoulder at Luminas, who was holding the remote control in her hand. Well, he could watch just as well from over there, right after he figured out what in Edison's name she was doing.

Sidling up to her, he asked, "Um, Luminas? You going to throw that switch or what?"

Her fingers were hovering over it. Every ounce of her attention seemed to be focused on that little switch. Her whole future kind of depended on it, he guessed. She inched a finger closer, but then, with a sigh, she drew her hand away and dropped the remote, letting it dangle from her fingers by the wiring. Avoiding Megavolt's eyes, she said, "I can't."

"What do you mean, you _can't_?" he demanded. "We've got Dipwing right where we want him! He's toast!"

Luminas swallowed and stared at the ground for a moment. "Yeah, but I just…can't." Suddenly, something seemed to occur to her, and she looked up at him, her expression brightening. "But you can!"

Megavolt opened his mouth to answer, then glanced towards the cage, where Darkwing was looking less nervous the longer their whispered conversation went on. He looked at the switch. "_You're_ supposed to kill him," he said, stalling for time without quite knowing why. "Negaduck doesn't care if _I_ kill Darkwing. You're supposed to be proving yourself here."

"Negaduck won't ever know which one of us did it!" she wheedled.

"So you can't do it but you have no problem watching _me_ kill him?" Megavolt asked.

At first, she didn't answer, but then she said, "You said you wanted him dead."

"Yeah," Megavolt said. "I do. It's not that. It's just…" He took the remote control from her and reached for the switch.

Then he pulled his hand back. Grumbling, he finished, "I just can't do it _this_ way." When she shot him a surprised look, he said, "Look, I'm into mayhem and destruction, all right? I'll be the first to tell you that. And I don't mind taking Darkwing out in a good old-fashioned fight. But murder just for the sake of killing someone isn't really my thing."

"Yeah, mine either," she mumbled.

Crossing his arms over his chest, Megavolt said, "But _you_ made a deal with Negaduck that you were going to kill Darkwing. If you're not into killing people you should've thought of that before."

"_I_ didn't make the deal," she hissed. "The four of _you_ made it for me and by the way, no one bothered to ask me if I was okay with it!"

"You seemed okay with it," he retorted.

She sputtered for a second, then snapped, "I didn't have much choice!"

"Hey, like Dorkwing said, you don't _have_ to join the Fearsome Five." As soon as the words left his mouth, he actually _regretted _them. Good Tesla in heaven, what was _with_ him? Somewhere along the line in the last three days he'd gone from finding Luminas an irritating inconvenience, to grudging acceptance of her and her ambitions, to…to…geez, he thought he might outright _like_ her. It might be too soon to call her a friend, but he could see it now. That was where things were headed. Ugh. This was what hanging out with the Fearsome Four had done. Now he was susceptible to things like friendship, and helping one's fellow villains out, and worst of all, caring about their feelings.

And she _did_ look hurt, even if it was only for a split second. His shoulders slouched and he studied his fingertips. Geez, he was really bad at this whole friend thing. He didn't really want to be better at it, but that wounded look in her eyes, even if it had disappeared quickly, just kind of…well it kind of hit him right in the chest. It kind of made him want to apologize, which he definitely wasn't going to do, but maybe he could say… something. "Not," he muttered, "that Darkwing knows what he's talking about."

She glanced up at him, her eyebrows drawn together in a dark furrow. "No, maybe Darkwing's right," she said mirthlessly. "Darkwing and Negaduck and you. I'm just not cut out to be in the Fearsome Five."

Megavolt rolled his eyes. "Come _on, _you don't really think that."

His flat, matter-of-fact tone snapped her out of her self-pity. "Excuse me?"

He poked a finger at her collarbone and repeated, "You don't think that. You're just saying it, and you know what? If you think I'm going to stand here and try to make you feel better about yourself, you've got another thing coming. Trust me, I've got plenty of better things to do."

She blinked. "What's your point?"

He smacked his forehead with the heel of his hand. "Do you want to be in the Fearsome Five or not?"

For a second, no longer, she hesitated. Then she said, "Yeah."

"And just to be clear on this, you're _not_ going to kill Darkwing?"

"I told you, I can't." She grimaced, glanced towards Darkwing, and then leaned closer to Megavolt, volunteering in a barely audible tone, "He has a daughter."

It was hard to tell what bothered her more, the admission itself or the possibility that Darkwing might hear her. Either way, it surprised Megavolt enough that all he could think of to say was, "He _might_ have a daughter."

Luminas shrugged. "It doesn't matter. If she's his daughter…well, I just can't stomach killing him and leaving her on her own."

Holding up a hand, he said, "_Don't _tell me what that's all about."

"I wasn't planning on it."

They both glanced towards Darkwing, who was obviously straining to hear what they were talking about, though he tried to make it look like he was just leaning on the cage once they both looked at him. "Need something, Deadwing?" Megavolt asked maliciously.

"Now that you mention it, a sandwich and a soda would be great," Darkwing replied sarcastically.

"Everyone's a comedian," Megavolt muttered.

Darkwing tried to lean an elbow on one of the metal strips of the cage, failed, and settled for crossing his arms over his chest. "Say, Sparky, why don't you let me out of here and we'll do this the old-fashioned way?"

Electricity arced between the prongs of Megavolt's hat. "Call me Sparky again and you're going to be dead the old-fashioned way, duck," he snarled. Then, turning back to Luminas, he said in a more quiet tone, "But maybe he has a point…?"

"No," she said in a low tone. "Too messy. No guarantees." She raised an eyebrow at him. "Didn't _you_ say Darkwing always wins?"

"Did I?" he asked. At her put-out look, he added, "I'm serious, did I say that?"

She sighed and glanced at their captive again. With a thoughtful look on her face, she said quietly, "What if Darkwing Duck just disappears?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean we get him to give up being Darkwing Duck. That's kind of like being dead."

Scoffing, Megavolt replied, "Oh, yeah, I'm sure Negaduck will go for that."

"Well," she said in a careful tone, "we'll just have to make sure that Negaduck's under the impression that Darkwing actually _is_ dead, won't we?"

Megavolt stared at her. "You're suggesting we lie to Negaduck."

With a wince, she said, "No good?"

He clapped her on the shoulder. "And you actually thought for a second that you didn't belong in the Fearsome Five!" When that made her smile, something occurred to him. "Just one thing—how is this _less_ messy than fighting him?"

"Because," she replied, "I have the perfect tool to blackmail him with."

For a second, Megavolt thought about that. He saw her point, but he didn't exactly agree with her. On the other hand, there was the plan to kill Negaduck to think about. Depending on when they pulled that off, it might not matter if the blackmail didn't work very well—or for very long.

"Okay," he said. "I can live with that." Her expression brightened—apparently she'd been concerned about him not going for this plan. With a grin, he added, "Let's go blackmail ourselves a super-hero."

The two of them approached the cage. Darkwing just looked bored now. It made Megavolt wish he'd built power settings into the cage. Having his feathers just a _little _fried would definitely wipe that smirk off the duck's face.

"All right, Dimwing," Megavolt said. "My associate and I have a deal for you."

Darkwing scoffed. "Ha! I don't make deals with delinquents, Sparky."

Putting her hands on her hips, Luminas said, "You might want to take this one, Darkwing. See, I'd _really_ hate to think of little Gosalyn growing up without a father." She smiled. "Almost as much as I'd hate to think of her not growing up at all."

Darkwing's face went slack with horror for a second before he recovered. "Empty threat," he said breezily. "Besides, I hardly—uh—know that little girl."

"Yeah," Luminas said, sounding like she really regretted what she was about to say, though the expression on her face told a different story. "See, the thing is, Darkwing, we know who you are, and we know where you live." She leaned closer to the cage, but not close enough that he might be able to reach out and grab her. There was a cruel smile on her face. "If we see you again, doing your flapping terror routine, well, then you're going to see _us_. And believe me, you don't want us showing up for a party at your house. We're not exactly…_neat_ guests."

This time, the worry in Darkwing's eyes didn't go away. "A super-hero doesn't abandon his city," he said, though his tone was much less sure.

Luminas flicked something off one of her gloves. "Even," she asked casually, "for his family?"

There was a long silence. Then Darkwing said, "_If_ I give up crime-fighting, it would be solely because a true hero doesn't allow the life of an innocent child to be threatened due to a malicious case of mistaken identity."

"We'll have to get him to give up the melodrama," Megavolt commented.

Darkwing glared and opened his mouth to respond, but Luminas cut him off before he could begin. "If you have to tell yourself that so you can sleep at night, fine," she said. "Now, do we have a deal?" When Darkwing hesitated, Luminas added, "I imagine Gosalyn's sound asleep in her cozy little bed right now…"

The silence was the longest of Megavolt's life. Not that he had a habit of remembering silences. And even if he did, he supposed, he wouldn't actually remember them. And—wait, what had Darkwing just said?

"Sorry," Luminas said, cupping a hand to her ear. "Didn't quite catch that, Darkwing."

Darkwing's head was hanging, his eyes invisible below the brim of his hat. In a low tone, a tone that didn't sound defeated so much as angry and helpless, he said, "Fine."

With a triumphant grin, Megavolt said, "Hey, nice doing business with you, Dorkwing! Now repeat after me: I am _not _the terror that flaps in the night…"

* * *

Luminas twirled Darkwing's fedora in her fingers, staring at it with a slight smile on her face. The brim was singed and there was one hole burned through it, the edges of it still smoldering a little. Darkwing Duck was gone.

And on _foot_, too, Megavolt thought to himself with a giggle. The two of them had slashed the tires on his motorcycle while Darkwing watched mutely, his eyes narrowed, and it had been so satisfying to watch them flatten and sag and for the unmasked mallard—though actually, they hadn't made him take off his mask, maybe that had been an oversight—to not be able to do a thing about it. After that, for good measure, and also just to be mean, Megavolt had fried the electrical system.

"So," Megavolt said to Luminas, "you did it. Sort of."

She looked up at him, her expression wary. "We're in this together, right? You can't tell _anyone_ what happened here tonight. As far as the world's concerned, I killed Darkwing Duck."

He raised an eyebrow. "Hey, I value my life. If Negaduck finds out I helped you pull a fast one on him, I'm just as dead as you."

"I guess mutually assured destruction is what passes for friendship around here, huh?" she asked, arching one of her eyebrows in return.

Holding up a hand, Megavolt said, "We're not friends."

She didn't look hurt. She also didn't look like she believed him. Only fair, really. He didn't believe himself, either.

The two of them walked around to the side of the building, where they'd hidden their respective vehicles. Before she got on her moped, though, Luminas said, "Well, Megavolt, tonight did answer _one_ question."

"What's that?" he asked, trying to remember if she'd just asked him one.

Her eyebrow curved upwards again. "That kid—she really _is_ Darkwing's daughter."

* * *

Darkwing Duck—no, Drake Mallard—dragged himself through the front door of 537 Avian Way. No spinning chairs tonight, no Darkwing Tower. He didn't know how Megavolt and Luminas had figured out where he lived, but he couldn't take the chance of them seeing anything that would put Gosalyn at risk.

His heart clenched at the thought of his daughter, and suddenly he had to know that she was safe. He'd had no choice but to leave her alone—Launchpad was still gone—and he was filled with sick dread as he rushed up the dark staircase.

Outside her closed door, he paused. Everything looked normal, but if he opened this door and it wasn't…

He shook his head and pushed the door open.

His eyes, already adjusted to the darkness from the long walk home, went directly to the lump on the bed. One of Gosalyn's arms was flung out, a foot was dangling off the bed, but she was sleeping peacefully. Undisturbed.

A sigh of relief escaped him, and he slowly made his way to the side of her bed, removing his cape as he went. Gently, he put a hand to her forehead, smoothing her hair away from her eyes. She stirred and mumbled something about zombies but didn't wake, and Drake smiled, then swallowed hard. The best way to keep her safe had always been to be Darkwing Duck. Now that he wasn't, he felt danger looming around the house.

With another sigh, this one most definitely not of relief, he reached up and removed his mask.

* * *

Luminas stood in front of Negaduck, her chin tilted defiantly upwards and a triumphant gleam in her eyes. The rest of the Fearsome Five were ranged around the room watching the impending confrontation. After all the trouble, Megavolt found himself really hoping that Negaduck was going to stick to his word.

But Negaduck was just staring at Luminas suspiciously, drumming his fingers on the table he was seated at. "I wanna see some proof," he finally snapped. "Where's the body?"

"I burned it," Luminas said casually. "Just seemed prudent, know what I mean?" Then she grinned. "But I _did_ bring you this." With a dramatic flourish that would have done any of St. Canard's super-villains proud, she produced a tattered and burned gray fedora and tossed it towards him. It spun through the air and landed on Negaduck's desk, knocking one of his unsheathed knives into a tailspin.

He brought his hand down on the knife, halting its movement without looking at it. He couldn't seem to take his eyes off the hat. "You can't possibly have done it," he said.

Her look hardened. "I did. There's the proof. Now, I thought we had an agreement, Negaduck."

Negaduck's glare turned towards the rest of the villains in the room. "I don't suppose any of you knobs can _corroborate_ this little claim of hers?"

There was a long silence. Then, Megavolt cleared his throat, half-hoping that Negaduck wouldn't hear him. No such luck. While Negaduck's eyes bored into him, Megavolt squeaked, "I can."

"_Really_." The sneer in Negaduck's voice was audible, even though Megavolt couldn't quite bring himself to look at the duck. "And _how_, exactly, did she pull it off?"

Megavolt didn't look at Luminas as he rattled off the way the night had gone—minus, of course, the whole part where neither of them had had the stomach to kill Darkwing. _That_ was something he'd take with him to his grave.

Quackerjack, Bushroot, and Liquidator were all staring at him. Suddenly another peril of friendship occurred to him—the better you knew a person, the better you could read them. He really, really hoped that Negaduck couldn't read him.

There was a silence, and then, finally, Negaduck shrugged. "Yeah, okay," he said, like he'd just consented to order pizza instead of spicy wings. Luminas stared in surprise at his nonchalance. "I can probably get a tax break for the diversity, anyway," he added grudgingly.

Her face lit up. "Really? I'm in?"

With another shrug, Negaduck said, "A deal's a deal. For now."

The addendum to that sentence didn't dim her happiness, and she whirled to meet Megavolt's eyes, a huge grin on her face. And though Megavolt wasn't normally attuned to the reactions of others, he couldn't help but notice the way Negaduck studied this interaction with narrowed eyes. It was hard not to get the feeling that this was a bad thing.

Nevertheless, Megavolt returned her smile.

"I hate to break up the happy occasion, but there's still the little matter of the _name_," Negaduck growled. "We're not going to be the fearsome bunch of idiots who can't even _add_."

Liquidator grinned. "Six out of six villains agree that a re-branding is in order."

With a giggle, Quackerjack suggested, "How about Psychotic Six?"

Bushroot shook his head and said, "That starts with P—hey! I'm not psychotic!" That only made Quackerjack laugh harder, which in turn made Negaduck look increasingly annoyed.

Clearing his throat with a burble, Liquidator said, "If I may make a suggestion? 'Sinister Six' has the ring of terror to it that today's super-villain gangs require."

"Hm." Negaduck put a thoughtful finger to his bill. "I guess I can get used to that." His typical cruel smile spread across his face. "And with no Darkwing Duck in the picture, this city will be ours by tomorrow night. Yeah. I can _definitely_ get used to that. Boys—" He glanced at Luminas. "—and girl, I guess—we have some serious crime to commit."

* * *

The celebration was short-lived. Even a happy Negaduck was impatient and full of hate for his underlings, after all. Luminas got her flakey happiness under control pretty quickly once they were outside, particularly after Liquidator expressed interest in the fact that dousing her with a substantial amount of water had knocked her out for hours.

But she couldn't keep the smile off her face, and before she hopped on her moped, she turned to Megavolt. "Don't say anything," he interrupted her, before she'd even opened her mouth. He could just tell. There were going to be thank you's and gratitude and he wasn't interested. "Besides," he added, remembering the way Negaduck had been watching them, "this might not be everything you think it's going to be."

"Pretty philosophical, Megs," she said.

"What did I tell you about nicknames?" he grumbled, rather than acknowledge this.

The irrepressible smile returned. "Guess I forgot," she said.

He shook his head and rolled his eyes, but he really couldn't help smiling back at her.

When she roared down the street on her moped, Megavolt watched until it disappeared around a corner, then turned to his villainous cohorts, none of whom had gone anywhere. "So what are we doing about Negaduck?" he asked.

Liquidator's arms were folded across his chest. "Projections show that the feasibility of continuing to work with Negaduck is zero percent. Are we all still in agreement on that?"

Four members of the Sinister Six looked at each other, and after a moment, Bushroot, Quackerjack, and Megavolt all nodded.

Liquidator's eyes narrowed. "Then the plan is still the same. Leave the details to me."


End file.
